The fundamental concept and purpose of having an open source programme office has largely stayed the same, since Sun Microsystems launched their OSPO in 1999. The TODOGroup definition of OSPOs still focuses on centering open source compliance, policies and communities around an OSPO. But the world and the criticality of Open Source has dramatically changed the last 25 years, and we See both a greater maturity inside companies making the OSPO largely unnecessary, as well as bigger challenges which an OSPO Is not enabled to solve, but should rather be an integral part of the companys IT strategy as a whole. Open source is no longer a fringe activity, but something which 97% of companies use, and for the large part is a very critical part of their IT strategy and investment. At the same time the vendor landscape as well as internal Security, Legal and compliance teams have matured their understanding of open source and no longer need an OSPO to support them. So what does the OSPO of the future look like? Is there even a need and a space for such a function? In this session I will bring in my learnings from 10 years in an open source start up and from establishing OSPOs in 2 of the largest european tech companies and give my view on how OSPOs should position themselves to still be relevant and support open source going forward. |