Open Source Consortium

Coalition of over 60 European open-source service providers united to form an organization dubbed the Open Source Consortium (OSC).  Their hard to locate site is here and site does give you the impression of changing face of open source. Some nice pictures there.

Their charter as listed on the site:

OSC provides a full range of insurance and risk solutions for the Open Source industry to help members:

    * negotiate profitable contracts with clients;
    * raise capital;
    * acquire and retain quality staff;
    * invest proceeds intelligently;
    * maximise supply chain efficiency; and
    * understand and protect intellectual property rights.

This is an impressive effort by industry members. By forming this type of collective they can better deal with any FUD (and fud will come no doubt about it !) from those vendors who will loose revenue in this open source advance. Their effort (which is plain and simple to understand ) is refreshingly clear of any legalese.

Stacey Quandt analyst in Robert Frances Group comments on how this is different from OSDL.

"Unlike the Open Source Development Lab that is funded by vendors to promote Linux as an operating system, this organization is focused on promoting open-source software overall," she said.

The group claims to offer indemnity insurance , which is a hot topic in the open-source movement these days. But Quandt said it is difficult to discern from the entity's literature what its technical definition of open-source is. It does appear to be different from what Hewlett Packard and other vendors offer as indemnity insurance, she said.

I wish them all the luck. We should join this effort.