Securing the Future of Open Source: Launching the Open Regulatory Compliance Working Group
Today marks an important milestone for the open source community. As open source software continues to drive innovation across industries, ensuring its relevance and compliance with emerging regulations has never been more critical.
To address these challenges, the Eclipse Foundation is proud to announce the formal launch of the Open Regulatory Compliance (ORC) Working Group. This initiative is designed to ensure that open source remains a powerful force for innovation while meeting the increasingly complex regulatory requirements that commercial organisations face globally.
As previously announced, this initiative has garnered the support of the world’s open source foundations, including Apache Software Foundation, Blender Foundation, FreeBSD Foundation, Matrix.org Foundation, NLnet Labs, OpenInfra Foundation, OWASP, PHP Foundation, Python Software Foundation, Ruby Central, and Rust Foundation. We also have the support of numerous civil society organisations, industry organisations, and SMEs including CodeDay, iJUG, Obeo, Open Elements, OpenForum Europe, Open Source Initiative, Payara Services, Scanoss, and Software Heritage. Today we are also announcing that we have the support of European industry heavyweights Bosch, Mercedes-Benz, Nokia, and Siemens.
This diverse collaboration highlights the industry’s shared commitment to navigating regulatory changes together and ensuring that open source continues to thrive as a pillar of modern technology.
Securing the Future of Open Source Innovation
In an era where businesses rely on open source for mission-critical applications, the ORC Working Group is essential to maintaining the competitive advantage that comes from using and contributing to open source software. As regulations evolve, commercial organisations need a clear path to stay compliant while continuing to innovate. The ORC Working Group addresses this need by helping to formalise industry-aligned best practices, helping companies leverage the full potential of open source without the risk of falling behind on new regulations.
Immediate Focus: The European Cyber Resilience Act
Open source is a cornerstone of global digital innovation, and Europe’s regulatory landscape is playing a pivotal role in shaping its future. The ORC Working Group is committed to ensuring that open source remains a vital part of the world economy, and complying with the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is a critical part of this. Through collaboration with European institutions, the working group is working to facilitate compliance with the CRA and similar regulations, helping businesses and developers alike stay ahead of the curve.
Keeping Innovation Compliant and Secure
With the Cyber Resilience Act as a primary focus, the ORC Working Group is looking to make progress in developing cybersecurity process specifications and best practices to support compliance. Liaison status with the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) further strengthens the working group.
Get Involved: Shaping the Future of Open Source Compliance
As the open source ecosystem faces unprecedented regulatory challenges, now is the time for all stakeholders — developers, companies, foundations, and regulatory bodies — to come together and ensure that open source innovation remains sustainable and compliant. The Open Regulatory Compliance (ORC) Working Group offers a unique opportunity to actively shape the future of open source by helping define the standards and best practices that will keep it relevant and competitive in the face of evolving global regulations.
We invite anyone involved in the open source community — whether you’re a developer, legal expert, corporate leader, or part of a standards organisation — to join this critical effort. Your participation will not only help safeguard the future of open source, but also ensure that your organisation stays ahead of the regulatory curve.Join the ORC Working Group and the ORC mailing list today to help define the future of open source compliance.
Strengthening Open Source: Latest Updates from the Open Regulatory Compliance Working Group
Earlier this year, a significant group of open source foundations including Apache Software Foundation, Blender Foundation, PHP Foundation, Python Software Foundation, Rust Foundation, and the Eclipse Foundation – joined forces to launch an exciting new initiative. This initiative aims to help all open source participants navigate and comply with governmental regulations, ensuring the continued use and advancement of open source through the software supply chain.
This initiative is now taking shape through what is now called the Open Regulatory Compliance Working Group, hosted at the Eclipse Foundation. Since our announcement in April, we’ve been tirelessly bootstrapping this group with incredible support from the community. We’ve also welcomed additional backing from both industry and the open source community, including organisations such as CodeDay, FreeBSD Foundation, iJUG, Matrix.org Foundation, NLnet Labs, Obeo, Open Elements, OpenForum Europe, OpenInfra Foundation, OWASP, Payara Services, and Scanoss.
The Open Regulatory Compliance Working Group is bridging a critical gap between regulatory authorities and the open source ecosystem. By collaborating with relevant authorities and standards organisations, the working group aims to formalise industry best practices so they can be properly referenced in legislation and support the authorities in understanding the peculiarities of the open source ecosystem. This ensures that all open source participants can meet regulatory requirements across jurisdictions and improve software quality and security.
While the Open Regulatory Compliance Working Group is chartered to address compliance with open source-impacting requirements in general, our immediate focus is the European Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), which is on the fast track to implementation. The CRA will come into force soon, followed by a three-year transition period for ironing out implementation details. The agenda for the standardisation process in particular is very tight, as the goal of the European Commission is to have the harmonised standards, for which it issued a draft request on April 17, be available a year in advance to give the industry time for implementation. This leaves us with a very limited time to ensure the unique needs of the open source ecosystem are well understood and properly addressed.
We’re addressing this challenge through a series of parallel work streams:
- Educating the Community: We’re hosting a series of webinars with the European Commission to bring the open source community up to speed on the EU’s legislative process.These sessions are recorded and available online. The first session, “How to read the CRA: Identifying the key parts of the CRA for effective compliance” led by Enzo Ribagnac, Associate Director of European Policy at Eclipse Foundation, is already available. Slides from our second session with Benjamin Bögel, Head of Sector for Product Security and Certification Policy at the European Commission, are also available online, with the full recording coming soon. Our third session on CRA Standards with guest speaker Filipe Jones Mourão, Policy Officer at the European Commission, took place on July 29. A fourth session titled “CRA OSS implementation: Guidelines, attestations and other key documents.” is planned for September 2.
- Building an Information Hub: We are creating a centralised hub to consolidate all relevant CRA information in one easily accessible location. This hub will contain educational information, such as recordings of the webinars we have organised, a glossary of terms, key references, and the very useful flow-chart that Maarten Artsen from NLnet Labs has kindly contributed.
- Collaborating with the European Commission: We’re closely working with the European Commission services to foster understanding of the legislative and standardisation timeline so we can create and deliver the right artefacts at the right time. Following what should be the timeline defined in the Commission’s standardisation request, our immediate focus is on the horizontal standard whose content is defined in Annex I, Part I of the CRA, along with the product-specific, vertical standards outlined in Annexes III and IV.
- Pursuing Formal Liaison Status: We are seeking formal liaison status with European and National Standards Organizations to strengthen our collaboration and impact.
- Formalising Governance: We are structuring the working group so as to allow for the development of specifications through a process recognized by the European Union, as well as gather feedback from relevant authorities on the results working group community work. Stay tuned for a formal announcement in September.
- Regular Updates: We will continue to keep the community informed through regular public calls, with the next one scheduled for Tuesday, August 20 at 2pm CEST.
Join us on this transformative journey as we navigate and shape the future of open source regulatory compliance. For more details and to stay updated, join our mailing list or visit our website.
The Open Source Community is Building Cybersecurity Processes for CRA Compliance
tl;dr – Apache Software Foundation, Blender Foundation, OpenSSL Software Foundation, PHP Foundation, Python Software Foundation, Rust Foundation, and Eclipse Foundation are jointly announcing our intention to collaborate on the establishment of common specifications for secure software development based on existing open source best practices.
In an effort to meet the real challenges of cybersecurity in the open source ecosystem, and to demonstrate full cooperation with, and to support the implementation of, the European Union’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), Apache Software Foundation, Blender Foundation, OpenSSL Software Foundation, PHP Foundation, Python Software Foundation, Rust Foundation, and Eclipse Foundation are announcing an initiative to establish common specifications for secure software development based on open source best practices.
This collaborative effort will be hosted at the Brussels-based Eclipse Foundation AISBL under the auspices of the Eclipse Foundation Specification Process and a new working group. As Europe’s largest open source foundation, which also supports a robust open specification process, the Eclipse Foundation is a natural home for this effort. Other code-hosting open source foundations, SMEs, industry players, and researchers are invited to join in as well. The starting point for this highly technical standardisation effort will be today’s existing security policies and procedures of the respective open source foundations, and similar documents describing best practices. The governance of the working group will follow the Eclipse Foundation’s usual member-led model but will be augmented by explicit representation from the open source community to ensure diversity and balance in decision-making. The deliverables will consist of one or more process specifications made available under a liberal specification copyright licence and a royalty-free patent licence.
The reasons for this collaboration extend beyond compliance. In an era where software, particularly open source software, plays an increasingly vital role in modern society, the need for reliability, safety, and security has steadily increased. New regulations, exemplified by the impending CRA, underscore the urgency for secure by design and robust supply chain security standards well before the new regulation comes into force in 2027.
While open source communities and foundations generally adhere to and have historically established industry best practices around security, their approaches often lack alignment and comprehensive documentation. The open source community and the broader software industry now share a common challenge: legislation has introduced an urgent need for cybersecurity process standards.
The CRA will lead to numerous standards requests from the Commission to the European Standards Organisations. And these are only the European requirements – additional demands from the US and other regions can be anticipated.
The CRA also creates a new type of economic actor – the “Open Source Software Steward”. It is in this context that we, as open source foundations, want to respond to the challenge of establishing common specifications for secure software development.
This challenge is compounded by the following:
- Today’s global software infrastructure is over 80% open source. The software stack that underpins any product with digital elements is typically built using open source software. As a result, it is fair to say that when we discuss the “software supply chain,” we are primarily, but not exclusively, referring to open source.
- Traditional standards organisations have had limited interactions with open source communities and the broader software/IT industry. To make matters more complicated, their governance models currently do not provide opportunities for open source communities to engage.
- Open source communities have a limited history of dealing with traditional standards organisations. To make matters more complicated, their resource constraints make it difficult for them to engage.
- Standards setting is typically a long process, and time is of the essence.
So while these new cybersecurity standards must be developed with the requirements of open source development processes and communities in mind, there is no clear path on how to do so in the time available. It is also important to note that it is similarly necessary that these standards be developed in a manner that also includes the requirements of proprietary software development, large enterprises, vertical industries, and small and medium enterprises.
Despite these challenges, a foundation for progress exists. The leading open source communities and foundations have for years developed and practised secure software development processes. These are processes that have often defined or set industry best practices around things such as coordinated disclosure, peer review, and release processes. These processes have been documented by each of these communities, albeit sometimes using different terminology and approaches. We hypothesise that the cybersecurity process technical documentation that already exists amongst the open source communities can provide a useful starting point for developing the cybersecurity processes required for regulatory compliance.
We hope that our specifications could inform the formal standardisation processes of at least one of the European Standards Organisations. Given the tight time horizon for implementation of the CRA, we believe that this immediate start will provide a constructive environment to host the technical discussions necessary for the stewards, contributors, and adopters of open source to meet the requirements set forth in these new regulations.
We invite you to join our collaborative effort to create specifications for secure open source development: Contribute your ideas and participate in the magic that unfolds when open source foundations, SMEs, industry leaders, and researchers combine forces to tackle big challenges. To stay updated on this initiative, sign up for our mailing list.
Eclipse and OpenAtom: Pioneering Open Source Innovation
We’re thrilled to share that the Eclipse Foundation has signed a collaboration agreement with the OpenAtom Foundation, China’s first open source foundation. Together, we will be driving the development of Oniro, an open source project that builds upon the versatile OpenHarmony operating system. Our aim is to create a modular and globally compatible operating system platform and ecosystem, catering to a wide spectrum of smart devices.
Oniro is more than an open source project. To our knowledge, this marks the first instance of two open source foundations engaging in such detailed technical collaboration – a significant step towards cultivating a global ecosystem for open intelligent devices. The collaborative approach not only ensures a competitive landscape, but also opens doors for participation by organisations worldwide, affirming the far-reaching impact of open source on technical innovation.
OpenHarmony: A Robust Platform
OpenHarmony shines in its versatility, offering robust support for a wide array of smart devices that not only showcases scalability, but also highlights its adaptability. Designed for scalable management of distributed systems, OpenHarmony stands out as a flexible platform capable of accommodating IoT solutions of varying scale.
In recent years, OpenHarmony has made some noteworthy advancements. It’s been certified in over 200 devices and now supports more than 40 development boards. With a vibrant community of over 6,200 contributors and over 16 million lines of code, it has fostered 42 distributions and played a pivotal role in launching over 200 devices.
Oniro: Tailoring OpenHarmony for Western Markets
The goal of the Oniro Project is to elevate the OpenHarmony platform by developing a suite of Western market-focused modifications and add-ons, while preserving compatibility with the core platform. This dynamic collaboration encompasses advancements in application frameworks, system-level components, software development tools, and a toolchain ensuring adherence to regulatory compliance, intellectual property compliance, and licensing.
As per Statista’s 2023 forecast, the worldwide count of connected devices is anticipated to nearly double by 2030, reaching an impressive 29.42 billion IoT devices. Oniro is well positioned to actively participate in this expansive growth with strong execution of the 3 fundamental principles on which this project is built: seamless interoperability, modularization, and a visually appealing user interface. These principles not only embody the core mission of Oniro, but also position it as the go-to option for a broad range of applications, including consumer electronics, home appliances, industrial IoT devices, smart home devices, and multimedia devices.
Join the Innovation Journey
As OpenHarmony and Oniro join forces, exciting times are ahead. We invite you to be part of this journey, contribute your ideas, and participate in the magic that unfolds when open source organisations collaborate. Stay tuned for more updates as we collectively build a future where innovation knows no bounds!
Good News on the Cyber Resilience Act
As the title says, there is good news to share on the progress of the European Union’s proposed Cyber Resilience Act (“CRA”) as the final revisions agreed to in the trilogue negotiations appear to largely exclude the open source community from its scope.
I have written (here and here) and spoken extensively about our concerns with the European Union’s proposed Cyber Resilience Act (“CRA”) in the past. As originally drafted, the CRA would have had an enormous negative impact on both the open source community and the EU’s innovation economy. In short, it would have required most open source projects (and every open source project that matters) made available in Europe to meet unrealistic regulatory requirements related to their secure software development and maintenance. OSS projects would have also been required to affix the CE Mark on their releases certifying that these regulatory requirements had been met, which additionally would have required outside audits performed for critical infrastructure projects such as operating systems. You can read the links above if you want to get a full understanding of the dire implications of the original draft of the CRA.
While the Eclipse Foundation has always shared the goals of the CRA to improve the state of security in the software industry, we have been very vocal in expressing our concerns with how unrealistic requirements could damage the open source community and Europe’s innovation economy. We have been very active in raising community awareness of the issues over the past year. For example, we helped facilitate two open letters co-signed with many of our peer organizations detailing the issues (here and here).
But we also invested a great deal of time and energy in constructively engaging with policymakers by providing explanations of the functioning of our ecosystems and technologies. The European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council through the Spanish Presidency, as well as numerous policy makers at the national level have all been open to our contributions and recognise our efforts to protect European open innovation. I would like to thank my colleagues Gesine Freund, Enzo Ribagnac, Mikaël Barbero, and Gaël Blondelle for their many contributions to this process.
We were not alone in these efforts. An assuredly incomplete list of other open source organizations that contributed to raising awareness includes: Apache Software Foundation, Internet Society, Free Software Foundation Europe, Linux Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, NLNet Labs, Open Source Initiative, Python Software Foundation, The Document Foundation, and many others. OpenForum Europe played a pivotal role in facilitating communication between these groups, and Ciarán O’Riordan at the OFE deserves recognition for his yeoman’s effort in coordinating the community’s input throughout the discussions on the CRA.
On December 1st it was announced that the EU co-legislators had reached political agreement on the CRA. Although the final text is still being worked on, we are happy to report the open source community has been listened to. The revised legislation has vastly improved its exclusion of open source projects, communities, foundations, and their development and package distribution platforms. It also creates a new form of economic actor, the “open source steward,” which acknowledges the role played by foundations and platforms in the open source ecosystem. This is the first time this has appeared in a regulation, and it will be interesting to see how this evolves. The Eclipse Foundation will be investing a great deal of effort into helping refine this concept and its implementation to ensure it aligns with the norms of the open source community. The final revisions also extended the implementation phase to three years, which means full compliance with the CRA will likely start in early 2027. OpenForum Europe’s recent press release on the CRA is certainly worth a read for additional context.
It is important to recognize and thank the many people that were involved in achieving this significantly better outcome. Both those who were involved from the side of the co-legislators who genuinely listened and made extensive improvements, and the many people from the open source community who invested their time and energy into explaining the unique requirements of the open source community.
But this journey is only beginning.
It is important to note that while the CRA has been revised to largely exclude the open source community from its scope, this legislation will still have an enormous impact on the software industry as a whole.
Open source projects will not be required to directly implement the mandated processes described in the CRA. But every commercial product made available in the EU which is built on top of those open source projects will. For the first time in the software industry’s history, it will soon have regulatory requirements for secure software development and maintenance. I predict this will put pressure on projects and communities to enhance their processes to assist in downstream commercialization.
After all, if a project is used in hundreds of products, doing the bulk of the CE Mark conformance work in the project rather than repeating the effort hundreds of times makes enormous sense. But as we all know, OSS projects at the moment simply do not have the resources to do this. It is impossible to know how all of this will play out, but an optimistic hypothesis is that once companies are required by law to meet secure software development practices they will be incented to invest in the upstream projects they rely upon. The Eclipse Foundation will be working hard to ensure that we evolve to support the needs of our committers, projects, and members in order to support the implementation of these new regulatory requirements. We will be discussing this early in the new year.
Interesting times!
