Agreed. So I think that covers their first point and to some extend the second 
point.

Then there is the point of general improvements of the industry.  I've seen 
many points floating around - but has this been collected as a wishlist/roadmap 
somewhere ?

And as to the final point (attic and post-ASF life cycle mngt)  - I'll try to 
start that in a separate email.

Dw

> On 29 Mar 2022, at 17:16, Mark J Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Thanks Dirk;
> 
> A good way forward would be to have us enhance and update and generalise
> what we prepared in the wiki[1] for the WH as this will be useful not just
> for the specific questions from the EU, but for other similar enquiries.
> Perhaps starting with a couple of new pages there.  While any official ASF
> communication back to enquiring entities should come from the Security
> Committee, as we did with the WH meeting we'd refer to the public docs.
> 
> [1]
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/COMDEV/White+House+Software+Security+Meeting%2C+January+13%2C+2022
> 
> Regards, Mark
> 
> 
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2022 at 10:32 AM Dirk-Willem van Gulik <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> 
>> Dear All,
>> 
>> We received the request below from the European Commission.
>> 
>> Whom would be willing to volunteer to address this ? I think this splits
>> into 3 chunks:
>> 
>> -       Help explain (just like the hearing in the US, etc) what we do
>> already; around releases, scrutiny, governance, CVE's, etc.
>> 
>> -       Help explain the limits of what a professional body of engineers
>> as individuals collectively can do (versus industry or the public sector)
>> 
>> -       Collectively discuss where we can improve; or what can be done to
>> improve things for the industry.
>> 
>> And finally - I think we should also discuss here if it makes sense to do
>> some specific effort on our attic/orphaned projects -- but I'll post that
>> as a separate message.
>> 
>> As a next step - it would be helpful to have peoples thoughts on these
>> questions - so we can then summarise them in a document/email.
>> 
>> With kind regards,
>> 
>> Dw.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ARORA Saranjit Singh <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> Dear Sally and Dear DW
>> 
>> I am currently working on a new open source programme called FOSSEPS, this
>> time externally focussed towards European Public Services, or public
>> administrations.  Here we are (i) building an open source EU Business
>> Applications catalogue, pulling together data from a number of national
>> catalogues. This way people can reuse, rather than re-build the same
>> application all over again! (ii) We are also asking European Public
>> Services and selected others (this includes yourselves, the ASF) to help us
>> identify software projects that are in a state of critical health… i.e. in
>> ICU, and may not survive.  So, they are also critical, in that we rely on
>> their continued existence, to run our other systems. (iii) we want to
>> encourage European public administrations to work together on open source
>> matters, i.e. on GovFoss.
>> 
>> Today, I am writing to you re #2 – Identifying Critical Software Projects.
>> This is particularly relevant to you, given your recent experience of
>> having to deal with the Log4shell incident. We read your position paper
>> with great interest.  We have sent out a survey and a help Guide to public
>> administrations, but for open source experts we are holding 45 minute
>> calls.  We would be very interested in discussing your views on critical
>> software, long-term FOSS maintenance/sustainability, and looking at
>> security and other issues.
>> 
>> Sally/Dirk, would you be kind enough to identify the right people and/or
>> send us the right information?  We are looking to (i) hold a session with
>> ASF, and so request a date/time after 28th of March, and (ii) request your
>> list of critical software that you would have identified? In due course, we
>> are also looking at remedies to remove such criticality and see how we can
>> nurse these projects back to health.
>> 
>> ------- Sample questions for the session -----------------
>> 
>> - Are there specific processes to identify projects with maintenance or
>> security problems among Apache Software Foundation projects?
>> 
>> - Do you have a specific policy regarding the sustainability of the
>> *dependencies* of projects hosted by the Apache Foundation?
>> 
>> - According to your experience, what are currently the main challenges or
>> problems related to FOSS maintenance/sustainability?
>> 
>> - What are the most promising initiatives for finding solutions to those
>> problems or taking up those challenges today? (both from a security point
>> of view and from a maintainers' financial/mental health sustainability
>> point of view?)
>> 
>> - Do you feel that there is a need for more commonly agreed metrics or
>> publicly available sources of data to assess the health of open Source
>> projects?
>> 
>> - As seen from the outside, it seems to us that the Executive Order on
>> Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity had a key role in the progress
>> currently being made: in your opinion was the political decision actually
>> decisive or was it just one amongst many converging factors?
>> 
>> - More generally, would you consider that governments/public bodies should
>> take specific actions on this topic?
>> 
>> ---------------- end ----------------------------------------------
>> 
>> 
>> Regards
>> 
>> Saranjit ARORA
>> Senior Consultant/Project Manager (Working Mon-Thu)
>> Member of the European Commission OSPO (Open Source Programme Office)
>> Project Manager of FOSSEPS (Free and Open Source Software for European
>> Public Services) Pilot Project
>> Previously Project Manager of the EU-FOSSA 2 Project and the project
>> dealing with Open Source Software Inventory, Security, Sustainability and
>> Funding Initiatives for European Public Services within the 2020 ISA2
>> Sharing and Re-use action (2016.31)
>> 
>> European Commission
>> DG Informatics, Unit B.3 – Reusable Solutions, MO15 06/P010, B-1049
>> Brussels/Belgium (phone # / signal / telegram redacted)
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
>> For additional commands, e-mail:
>> [email protected]
>> 
>> 


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]

Reply via email to