Started in 1999 and established as an official corporate function in 2005, Sun’s Open Source Program Office (OSPO) was among the first in the industry and maybe the first to use the name.

As I’ve discussed in earlier posts, corporations are the vehicle for the collective expression of many individuals. However, to the outside world they are a monolith, and are expected to be consistent as well as predictable in their actions.  With the many varied, implicit expectations and explicit obligations that different open source projects have, transforming a company’s reputation into that of a good actor in open source is a complex task.  It’s also a necessary one if you expect other actors to invest their time and work in your project, or to give you influence in steering a project together.