Open Source Business Alliance

The Open Source Business Alliance - Bundesverband für digitale Souveränität e.V. is a German non-profit that operates Europe's biggest network of companies and organizations developing, building and using open source software.

History
The alliance was founded in July 2011 in Stuttgart. The two founding associations, Linux Solutions Group e.V. (Lisog) and the LIVE Linux-Verband e.V., officially merged their groups at their annual general meetings on the 20th and 21 July 2011.

The merger aimed to create a unified lobby group for the German open-source movement.

In 2014, a further attempted consolidation failed. The OSB Alliance and the Open Source Business Foundation (OSBF) first announced their intention to merge the two associations to form a single large advocacy group on 18 November 2013. After almost a year of negotiations that only achieved an agreement, the merger collapsed on 15 October 2014.

At their annual general meeting in Berlin in 2018, the association's name change to "Open Source Business Alliance - Federal Association for Digital Sovereignty" was proposed and received broad support from the members present. From the perspective of the association, open source software and open standards are necessary and essential prerequisites for digital sovereignty. The OSB Alliance has established itself as one of the mouthpieces and has been promoting and promoting the topic of "digital sovereignty" for several years. As a nationwide representative of the open source industry and users, the OSB Alliance has now expanded its name in order to make this objective more aware.

General goals
The alliance's main aims are to:
 * Promote Linux and open source-based solutions and their use in businesses and institutions, and to support the providers of open-source software and services
 * Help companies to develop an open source-based business strategy
 * Provide a communication platform to open source-focused IT providers and users, to encourage and promote improvements in open source
 * Develop continuous contact with politics and public administration bodies
 * Work to raise public awareness of open source

Central objectives of the alliance:


 * The use of open standards with manufacturer-independent, fully published, unlimited specifications
 * The abolition of software patents, or alternatively, irrevocable free use of existing software patents
 * Inviolability of copyright
 * Action by public bodies to enable participation, i.e. open data, open innovation and open access
 * Open-minds economy through public forms of cooperation in politics and business
 * Net neutrality, i.e. equal treatment of all online data flows

Board
The current board of Open Source Business Alliance e.V. consists of 19 members:


 * Peter Ganten, Univention GmbH (Chairman of the Board)
 * Anja Stock, Sustaining Member (First Vice Chair)
 * Hong Phuc Dang, Sustaining Member (Second Vice Chairperson)
 * Timo Levi, Deutsche Telekom & T-Systems (Second Vice Chairperson)
 * Diego Calvo de Nó, Proventa AG (Financial Director)
 * Rico Barth, c.a.p.e. IT GmbH
 * Birgit Becker, EGroupware GmbH
 * Lothar Becker, .riess applications GmbH
 * Mario Behling, OPNTEC GmbH
 * Holger Dyroff, ownCloud GmbH
 * Torsten Frenzel, AKDB AöR
 * Prof. Dr. Helmut Krcmar, Technische Universität München
 * Felix Kronlage-Dammers, Sustaining Member
 * Michael Leibfried, Red Hat GmbH
 * Uwe Presler, Bechtle Systemhaus Holding AG
 * Milisav Radmanic, Sustaining Member
 * Lisa Reisch, Sustaining Member
 * Alfred Schröder, Gonicus GmbH
 * Dr. Karl-Heinz Strassemeyer, formerly IBM Germany (Honorary Chairman)

Working groups and projects
The OSB Alliance supports working groups that cover a wide range of issues. As of February 2021 the following working groups were in operation:


 * WG Cloud
 * WG Continuous License Compliance
 * would like to make companies that rely on the "innovation model - open source software" less vulnerable and thus more competitive. The group wants to contribute to efficiently taking into account the aspect of license compliance in medium-sized companies. The “Continuous License Compliance” working group aims to bring routine and continuity to the handling of open source licenses and to promote the automation of open source compliance in cooperation with the community. In addition, the exchange of experiences and best practices should be encouraged and promoted.


 * WG Education
 * works on the modern use of digital and interactive teaching and learning material in schools and digital education platforms based on open technologies and standards. In November 2013, the group presented a 30-page document entitled “Digital media, educational platforms and IT infrastructure in schools based on open systems and standards”. The goal is to create an open “education cloud” that is centrally provided but configured locally.


 * WG Events
 * decides which events the association attends and arranges its participation. Since 2012, the Working Group Events has organised the OSB Alliance’s Open Source Day, held every autumn. Another of its main focuses is coordinating the appearance of the OSB Alliance at CeBIT, as well as at other events with relevant topics, such as the OPEN-IT SUMMIT  or OPEN!2015.


 * WG Procurement
 * WG Public Affairs
 * formulates the positions of the OSB Alliance related to politics and public administration.  The group maintains direct and regular contact with politicians, acts as a point of contact for all questions from the public sector and cooperates in European fora. In November 2013, the working group published a brochure on PRISM and its consequences, with tips for countermeasures.  Most recently on 21 October 2014, the group held an open IT conference with councillors of the Green Party.


 * WG Security
 * Companies and personal members who have special expertise in the field of security have come together in the OSB Alliance to form the Security Working Group. In this way, the exchange of experience among the members can be promoted and analyses and statements on security topics can be developed for the interested public.

Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS)
In November 2019, Rafael Laguna de la Vera (founding director SPRIND), Peter Ganten (CEO Univention and chairman of the OSB Alliance), Oliver Mauss (CEO PlusServer) and Kurt Garloff came up with the idea of proposing a manufacturer-independent, free, federatable cloud stack for Gaia-X and develop. The idea was given the name Sovereign Cloud Stack (short: SCS) and fell on fertile ground at BMWi and Gaia-X. SCS was integrated as a sub-working group in Gaia-X and further developed by a small team made up of Christian Berendt (CEO OSISM), Dirk Loßack and Kurt Garloff and a growing community. A feasibility study was also carried out on behalf of SPRIND and a funding application for the BMWi was drawn up for the OSB Alliance. On July 13, 2021, the OSB Alliance announced that it receives 14.9M€ funding to coordinate and fund the development of the software and the ecosystem. SCS is affiliated to the Gaia-X Provider Working Group as an (Open) Work Package. SCS uses available open source technologies such as Ceph, Prometheus, OpenStack and Kubernetes and performs the automation, configuration, integration and validation of the components in a standardized and certifiable stack. In addition to the software stack, the project focuses in particular on tools for business automation and the documentation of business processes. With Betacloud and PlusCloud Open the first productive SCS-based public clouds are already available (as of July 2021); further public clouds and implementations as private clouds in industry and public administration are already in progress.

Open Source Integration Initiative (OSII)
LiSoG initiated a project intended to integrate the single components through a SOA strategy. The project is hosted by MFG in Stuttgart and founded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology within the Central Innovation Programme SME.