3 years ago

Category: Software, Security, Microsoft, github, gitlab

In an attempt to coalesce the efforts and opinions of numerous players in the open source software (OSS) space, and bring about industry-wide security solutions for open source software, the Linux Foundation has launched the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF). Open source software faces some unique security challenges as a result of its collaborative development process, and it is, therefore “important that those responsible for their user or organization’s security are able to understand and verify the security of this dependency chain,” as the OpenSSF website states.

We are bringing a broader community of initiatives, interests, and resources that have been put into place to tackle the open source security challenge, and bringing those together under one home. We’re trying to come up with a more coordinated response to the massively expanding security challenge around open source software,” said Mike Dolan, senior vice president and general manager of Linux Foundation Projects.

While the current focus of the OpenSSF is decidedly around security for open source software, Dolan also says that he thinks its effects could extend beyond OSS to open source hardware, and even software in general.