Open source blockchain project, hyperledger, settling it at the linux foundation

The open source movement can be traced back as far as 1997, when Eric Raymond published The Cathedral and the Bazaar. The paper reflected upon the hacker community and free software principles. It received significant attention in 1998, and was a key driving factor behind the decision to release the Internet suite, Netscape Communicator, as free software. The source code went on to become the backbone of many search engines, including the widely used Mozilla Firefox.

Today, the broad reaching term primarily refers to computer software with underlying source code that is available for anybody to use or modify. The copyright holder typically provides the rights to study, change and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose.

The 2015 annual Future of Open Source Survey polled more than 1300 respondents from software-related organizations and the open source community. Sponsored by Black Duck Software, the results showed that corporate open source use and participation had reached an all-time high.

78% of respondents said their companies ran part or all of its operations on open source software, and 66% said they take an open source-first approach to software. Furthermore, it was predicted that in the next two to three years, 88% of companies will increase their contributions to open source projects.

“Open source software is revolutionizing technology by enabling companies to speed development, reduce costs, increase innovation, and improve efficiency.”
— – Black Duck Software

Bitcoin is an open source project that was first described by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. The Peer to Peer electronic cash system, as it’s described in the white paper, has been worked on by hundreds of people, and been replicated countless times.

One of the many collaborative efforts inspired by Bitcoin is the Hyperledger Project. The project was created to advance bitcoin’s underlying technology, by identifying and addressing important features in a cross-industry open standard.

“By creating a cross-industry open standard for distributed ledgers, virtually any digital exchange with value, such as real estate contracts, energy trades, marriage licenses, can securely and cost-effectively be tracked and traded.”
— – Hyperledger

The Hyperledger trademark was given to the Linux Foundation by Digital Assets Holdings in February this year. The Linux Foundation is a non-profit technology trade association, established by the merger of the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group in 2007.

Alongside its many diverse projects, the Foundation supports the work by Linus Torvalds, one of the key adopters of the term “open source,” and the creator of the Linux kernel. Torvalds work became the core for operating systems such as GNU, and years later Android and Chrome OS.

“The Linux Foundation protects and promotes the ideals of freedom and generous collaboration established through the development of Linux, and shares these ideals to power any endeavor aiming to make the future a better place in which to live.”
— – Linux Foundation

Yesterday, the Linux Foundation announced that it has filled key leadership positions for the Hyper Ledger Project, by member vote, and is also welcoming new members.

The Hyperledger Project has an open governance model. The Technical Steering Committee (TSC) provides technical leadership, the Board of directors manage governance, marketing and operational decisions.

The TSC will consist of Committee Chair Chris Ferris, engineer and CTO of open technology at IBM. The remaining seats are held by; Tamás Blummer, Digital Asset Holdings; Mic Bowman, Intel; Richard Brown, R3; Stanislav Liberman, CME Group; Hart Montgomery, Fujitsu; Satoshi Oshima, Hitachi; Stefan Teis, Deutsche Börse; Emmanuel Viale, Accenture; Pardha Vishnumolakala, DTCC; and David Voell, J.P. Morgan.

The Board Chair will be Blythe Masters, CEO at Digital Asset Holdings. In addition, the Governing Board Members come with high ranking corporate support from companies such as IBM, SWIFT, Fujitsu, J.P. Morgan and many more.

“It is vital for a piece of common, shared infrastructure to be open to critical inspection.”
— – Digital Asset Holdings

10 new companies will also be joining the group; Blockstream, Bloq, eVue Digital Labs, Gem, itBit, Milligan Partners, Montran Labs, Ribbit.me, Tequa Creek Holdings and Thomson Reuters.

“There is no other effort advancing an open blockchain with this level of broad industry representation and level of leadership,” Jim Zemlin, Executive Director at The Linux Foundation said in a press release. “The Hyperledger Project is among our fastest growing projects at The Linux Foundation. The opportunity is great. This leadership team and the community investments among members across industries put the project in the best position possible to accomplish its mission.”

While the Linux Foundation enjoys the support of several industry giants, there are many other projects that have been attracting attention. Openchain was unveiled by Coinprism, in October 2015. The company is responsible for the development of the Open Assets standard, “colored coins,” that is now used by NASDAQ and Overstock. Openchain was added to Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service late last year.

“Deploy your own private sidechain in seconds. Blockchain technology, supercharged.”
— – Openchain

Openchain is focused on delivering blockchain solutions to the financial industry. The concept behind the project  is that each institution or company can deploy their own instance of Openchain, which will then be able to interconnect with each other. “With Openchain, every new transaction is immediately chained to the previous one, which means confirmation can be made instant, while still having the guarantee of immutability,” states Flavien Charlon, Coinprism CEO.

Openchain is designed as a generic register of ownership. There are a variety of use cases such as: Securities like stocks and bonds, commodities like gold and oil, currencies like the Dollar or even Bitcoin; Titles of ownership like land titles, music or software licensing; Gift cards and loyalty points.