The Growing Importance of Software Bills of Materials (SBOM)

In this episode, host Karsten Hohage discusses the European Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) with Mirko Boehm, Mike Milinkovich, and Sebastian Wolf. Our guests explain what the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is and why it is important to virtually everyone in the EU and anyone who wants to do business in the European market. What has the journey of the CRA been until now, and what are the next steps in the evolution of CRA? How will the CRA impact the consumption and contribution of Open Source Software?

In this episode, host Karsten Hohage discusses open source and InnerSource at universities with our guest Clare Dillon. Clare explains how collaborative, community-driven approaches to open-source development at universities result in greater knowledge sharing, but also what the academia-specific challenges to open approaches are. This episode will help you gain insight into the evolving open source landscape in academia and how it differs from other parts of the OSS ecosystem.

In this episode, our host Karsten Hohage talks to Powen Shiah and Mirko Swillus about the Sovereign Tech Fund. Established in 2022, it focuses on critical infrastructure in the public interest with the goal of supporting development, improvement, and maintenance of open-source components in digital infrastructure. The funding comes from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz), as investing in digital commons strengthens innovation, economic competition, and democracy.

In this episode, our host Karsten Hohage talks to Max Mehl and Sebastian Wolf about Software Bills of Materials or SBOMs. An SBOM is a detailed record of all components within a software application, including open-source libraries, third-party dependencies and licenses. Max and Sebastian discuss the importance of SBOMs as well as some challenges and unanswered questions of the state of the art. They also speak with Karsten about SBOMs within SAP and Deutsche Bahn and the importance of SBOMs when it comes to open source.

In this episode, our host Karsten Hohage talks to Thomas Barber about project “Foxhound”, an SAP-maintained fork of Firefox (the web browser) that is designed to detect security vulnerabilities in websites. Thomas discusses the history of “Foxhound”, how and why it was created, and its journey to becoming an open-source project. He talks about the importance of the collaborations that made Foxhound successful and about some of the challenges that it has faced along the way. Anyone who wants to get involved in this project is welcome to visit the GitHub page to learn more.

In this episode our host Karsten Hohage talks to Ana Jiménez Santamaria about the TODO Group, a community dedicated to sharing knowledge, collaborating on practices, tools, and other ways to run effective Open Source Program Offices and similar initiatives. They discuss its history, mission, working mode, and how TODO Group provides a platform to connect peers and enables them to collaborate on projects that promote the integration of strategic open-source practices within different organizations. Everyone is welcome to join the TODO mission and contribute to the continuous development of best practices.

OCM is an extensible standard accompanied by a toolset designed to enable the automation of many software-lifecycle-related processes. It can be defined as a common machine-readable format for describing software components, which serves as a Software Bill of Delivery (SBoD). In this episode, our guests Jason Kafka and Ingo Kober discuss with host Karsten Hohage about OCM and why it is run as open source. Jason and Ingo also talk about their vision for OCM’s future, its applications, and its challenges.

Summer Break 2023 - We'll be back in August!

Credential Digger is an SAP Open-Source code scanner for detecting hardcoded secrets. In this episode, Slim Trabelsi discusses with host Karsten Hohage what led to the creation of Credential Digger and about its key differentiators. Slim also speaks of the early challenges of scanning for secrets, and lists the many advantages of using open source for building and maintaining Credential Digger. Open source comes with visibility for customers, and contributors can work on a project even before they join the team or after they leave, leading to improved continuity and a better tool overall.

In this episode, our host Karsten Hohage talks with Johannes Bechberger, who is an open-source developer at SAP. They discuss why and how Johannes promotes his work on SapMachine, OpenJDK, and profiling through blogging, speaking at conferences, and having a presence on social media. Johannes also shares tips and learnings collected on his journey of “doing good and talking about it”.