Linux Foundation Hosts Collaboration Among World’s Largest Insurance Companies

openIDL platform provides a standardized data repository streamlining regulatory reporting and enabling the delivery of next-gen risk and insurance applications

San Francisco, Calif., April 12, 2021 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, and the American Association of Insurance Services (AAIS), today are announcing the launch of OpenIDL, the Open Insurance Data Link platform and project. The platform will reduce the cost of regulatory reporting for insurance carriers, provide a standardized data repository for analytics and a connection point for third parties to deliver new applications to members.

openIDL brings together some of the world’s largest insurance companies, including The Hanover and Selective Insurance Group, along with technology and service providers Chainyard, KatRisk and MOBI to advance a common distributed ledger platform for sharing information and business processes across the insurance ecosystem.

The first use case for the openIDL network is regulatory reporting in the Property and Casualty (P&C) insurance industry. Initially built with guidance from AAIS, a leading insurance advisory organization and statistical reporting agent, openIDL leverages the trust and integrity inherent in distributed ledger networks. The secure platform guarantees to regulators and other insurance industry participants that data is accurate and complete, implemented by a “P&C Reporting Working Group” within the openIDL network.

“From the very beginning, we recognized the enormous transformative potential for openIDL and distributed ledger technology,” said AAIS CEO Ed Kelly. “We are happy to work with the Linux Foundation to help affect meaningful, positive change for the insurance ecosystem.”

Insurance sectors beyond P&C are expected to be supported by openIDL in the coming months, and use cases will expand beyond regulatory. A “Flood Working Group” has already been assembled to develop use case catastrophe modeling in support of insurers and regulators. openIDL is also collaborating on joint software development activities, building upon Hyperledger Fabric, Hadoop, Node.js, MongoDB and other open technologies to implement a “harmonized data store,” enabling data privacy and accountable operations.

The combined packaging of this software is called an “openIDL Node,” approved and certified by developers working on this project, and every member of the network will be running that software in order to participate in the openIDL network. Additional joint software development for analytics and reporting are also included in the openIDL Linux Foundation network.

“We’re delighted to join openIDL with AAIS and the Linux Foundation. It is strategically important for Selective to be part of industry efforts to innovate our regulatory reporting and use distributed ledgers,” said Michael H. Lanza, executive vice president, general counsel & chief compliance officer of Selective Insurance Group, Inc.

openIDL is a Linux Foundation “Open Governance Network.” These networks comprise nodes run by many different organizations, bound by a shared distributed ledger that provides an industry utility platform for recording transactions and automating business processes. It leverages open source code and community governance for objective transparency and accountability among participants. The network and the node software are built using open source development practices and principles managed by the Linux Foundation in a manner that enterprises can trust.

“AAIS, and the insurance industry in general, are trailblazers in their contribution and collaboration to these technologies,” said Mike Dolan, senior vice president and general manager of Projects at the Linux Foundation. “Open governance networks like openIDL can now accelerate innovation and development of new product and service offerings for insurance providers and their customers. We’re excited to host this work.”

As an open source project, all software source code developed will be licensed under an OSI-approved open source license, and all interface specifications developed will be published under an open specification license. And all technical discussions between participants will take place publicly, further enhancing the ability to expand the network to include other participants. As with an openly accessible network, organizations can develop their own proprietary applications and infrastructure integrations.

Additional Members & Partner Statements

Chainyard

Chainyard is pleased to join the OpenIDL initiative as an infrastructure member,” said Isaac Kunkel, Chainyard SVP Consulting Services. “Blockchain is a team sport and with the openIDL platform, companies, regulators and vendors are forming an ecosystem to collaborate on common issues for the betterment of the insurance industry. The entire industry will benefit through more accurate data and better decision making.”

KatRisk

“The openIDL platform will serve to increase access to state of the art catastrophe modelling data from KatRisk and others, serving to reduce the friction required to house and run said models. KatRisk expects all parties, from direct insurance entities to regulators, to see an increase in data quality, reliability and ease of access as catastrophe modelling output is effectively streamed across OpenIDL nodes to generate automated reports and add to or create internal business intelligence databases. If catastrophe models are about owning your own risk, then the OpenIDL platform is an effective tool to better understand and manage that risk,” said Brandon Katz, executive vice president, member, KatRisk.

MOBI

“The Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI) is delighted to join with the Linux Foundation, AAIS, and insurance industry leaders in founding OpenIDL.  Data sharing and digital collaboration in business ecosystems via industry consortium ledgers like OpenIDL will drive competitive advantage for many years to come,” said Chris Ballinger, founder and CEO, MOBI.

For more information, please visit www.openidl.org

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more. The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

ABOUT AAIS

Established in 1936, AAIS serves the property casualty insurance industry as the modern, Member-based advisory organization. AAIS delivers custom advisory solutions, including best-in-class forms, rating information and data management capabilities for commercial lines, inland marine, farm & agriculture, commercial auto, personal auto, and homeowners insurers. Its consultative approach, unrivaled customer service and modern technical capabilities underscore a focused commitment to the success of its Members. For more information about AAIS, please visit www.AAISonline.com.

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The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact
Jennifer Cloer for Linux Foundation
503-867-2304
jennifer@storychangesculture.com

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The Linux Foundation Hosts Project to Decentralize and Accelerate Drug Development for Rare Genetic Diseases

OpenTreatments and RareCamp creator Sanath Kumar Ramesh built the project to address his son’s rare disease, now that work will be available to all in an effort to accelerate treatments

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 31, 2021 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, and the OpenTreatments Foundation, which enables treatments for rare genetic diseases regardless of rarity and geography, today announced the RareCamp software project will be hosted at the Linux Foundation. The Project will provide the source code and open governance for the OpenTreatments software platform to enable patients to create gene therapies for rare genetic diseases.

The project is supported by individual contributors, as well as collaborations from companies that include Baylor College of Medicine, Castle IRB, Charles River, Columbus Children’s Foundation, GlobalGenes, Odylia Therapeutics, RARE-X and Turing.com.

“OpenTreatments and RareCamp decentralize drug development and empowers patients, families and other motivated individuals to create treatments for diseases they care about. We will enable the hand off of these therapies to commercial, governmental and philanthropic entities to ensure patients around the world get access to the therapies for the years to come,” said Sanath Kumar Ramesh, founder of the OpenTreatments Foundation and creator of RareCamp.

There are 400 million patients worldwide affected by more than 7,000 rare diseases, yet treatments for rare genetic diseases are an underserved area. More than 95 percent of rare diseases do not have an approved treatment, and new treatments are estimated to cost more than $1 billion.

“If it’s not yet commercially viable to create treatments for rare diseases, we will take this work into our own hands with open source software and community collaboration is the way we can do it,” said Ramesh.

The RareCamp open source project provides open governance for the software and scientific community to collaborate and create the software tools to aid in the creation of treatments for rare diseases. The community includes software engineers, UX designers, content writers and scientists who are collaborating now to build the software that will power the OpenTreatments platform. The project uses the open source Javascript framework NextJS for frontend and the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Serverless stack – including AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon DynamoDB – to power the backend. The project uses the open source toolchain Serverless Framework to develop and deploy the software. The project is licensed under Apache 2.0 and available for anyone to use.

“OpenTreatments and RareCamp really demonstrate how technology and collaboration can have an impact on human life,” said Brett Andrews, RareCamp contributor and software engineer at Vendia. “Sanath’s vision is fueled with love for his son, technical savvy and the desire to share what he’s learning with others who can benefit. Contributing to this project was an easy decision.”

“OpenTreatments Foundation and RareCamp really represent exactly why open source and collaboration are so powerful – because they allow all of us to do more together than any one of us,” said Mike Dolan, executive vice president and GM of Projects at the Linux Foundation. “We’re honored to be able to support this community and are both confident and inspired about its impact on human lives.”

For more information and to contribute, please visit: OpenTreatments.org

About OpenTreatments Foundation

OpenTreatments Foundation’s mission is to enable treatments for all genetic diseases regardless of rarity and geography. Through the OpenTreatments software platform, patient-led organizations get access to a robust roadmap, people, and infrastructure necessary to build a gene therapy program. The software platform offers project management capabilities to manage the program while reducing time and money necessary for the development. For more information, please visit: OpenTreatments.org

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more.  The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page:  https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact

Jennifer Cloer
for the OpenTreatements Foundation
and Linux Foundation
503-867-2304
jennifer@storychangesculture.com

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LF Networking Announces New Member Walmart, Bolsters a New Era of Enterprise Open Source Networking

  • Participation by the fortune 1 enterprise brings technical leadership and unprecedented scale to LFN projects across Network Management & Automation
  • Koby Avital, EVP of Technology Platforms, Walmart Global Tech, joins the Governing Board as LFN Platinum member
  • Community Growth signals ecosystem commitment to leverage open source for collaborative network transformation across Cloud, Enterprise and Service Provider Ecosystems.

SAN FRANCISCO– March 31, 2021 – LF Networking (LFN), the de-facto collaboration ecosystem for Open Source Networking projects, today announced that Walmart has joined as a Platinum member. Walmart is the first retail member of LFN and joins 21 other global organizations as Platinum members all working to accelerate open source networking.  

“We are thrilled to welcome Walmart to the LF Networking community,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge and IoT, at the Linux Foundation. “As the world’s largest retailer, Walmart brings expertise across a broad swath of areas, including retail point of sale networking, enterprise IT, and hybrid cloud deployments.  We look forward to collaborative efforts that accelerate the open source networking community.”

“I’m excited to join the Linux Foundation Governing Board on behalf of Walmart,” said Koby Avital, Executive Vice President, Walmart Global Tech. “By joining LFN, Walmart has the opportunity to contribute, influence the cloud growth and better support the enterprise and service provider communities by open-sourcing innovative technologies across its retail infrastructure.”

Join the LF Networking community October 11-12 for Open Networking and Edge Summit (ONES), the industry’s premier open networking event, expanded to comprehensively cover Edge Computing, Edge Cloud & IoT. ONES North America enables collaborative development and innovation across enterprises, service providers/telcos and cloud providers to shape the future of networking and edge computing. Details here: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/open-networking-edge-summit-north-america/.

About the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and industry adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

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Linux Foundation Will Host AsyncAPI to Support Growth and Collaboration for Industry’s Fastest-Growing API Spec

The open specification for defining asynchronous APIs gains momentum, seeks neutral home for open governance, community growth and industry adoption

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 30, 2021 –  The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced it will host the AsyncAPI Initiative. AsyncAPI is a specification and a suite of open source tools that work with asynchronous APIs and event-driven architectures. It is the fastest-growing API specification according to a recent developer survey, tripling in production usage from 2019 to 2020.

Founding sponsors of the AsyncAPI Initiative include Ably Realtime, Apideck, Bump, IQVIA Technologies, MuleSoft, Slack, Solace, and TIBCO, and AsyncAPI recently announced a partnership with Postman. Today, AsyncAPI is in production at Adidas, PayPal, Salesforce, SAP, and Slack, among other enterprise environments. 

“As the growth of AsyncAPI skyrocketed, it became clear to us that we needed to find a neutral, trusted home for its ongoing development. The Linux Foundation is without question the leader in bringing together interested communities to advance technology and accelerate adoption in an open way,” said Fran Méndez, who created AsyncAPI in 2016. “This natural next step for the project really represents the maturity and strength of AsyncAPI. We expect the open governance model architected and standardized by the Linux Foundation will ensure the initiative continues to thrive.” 

AsyncAPI helps unify documentation automation and code generation, as well as managing, testing, and monitoring asynchronous APIs. It provides language for describing the interface of event-driven systems regardless of the underlying technology and supports the full development cycle of event-driven architecture.  AsyncAPI is considered a sister project of the OpenAPI Initiative, which is focused on synchronous REST communication and is also hosted by the Linux Foundation.

“The Linux Foundation is pleased to provide a forum where individuals and organizations can come together to advance AsyncAPI and nurture collaboration in a neutral forum that can support the kind of growth this community is experiencing,” said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO and Vice President, Developer Relations at the Linux Foundation.

For more information, please visit: https://www.asyncapi.org

Supporting Quotes

Łukasz Górnicki, AsyncAPI

“AsyncAPI at Linux Foundation is another brick needed to build a solid and sustainable community for the project. We are securing a perimeter for AsyncAPI and can focus on expanding the vision of making all the specs work together for the user’s good.”

Bill Doerrfeld, NordicAPIs

“Open standards are only as strong as their community effort. The details of the AsyncAPI charter represent their ongoing community mission and goal to retain vendor neutrality around the format. AsyncAPI is taking an active role in enacting this by limiting company representation per TSC, privileging work over money, and other strategies.”

Kin Lane, Postman

“AsyncAPI joining the Linux Foundation is the final cornerstone in the foundation of the open source event-driven API specification. This creates solid groundwork for defining the next generation of API infrastructure, beginning with HTTP request and response APIs, but also event-driven approaches spanning multiple protocols and patterns including Kafka, GraphQL, MQTT, AMQP, and much more. And all of that, in turn, will provide what is needed to power documentation, mocking, testing, and other critical stops along a modern enterprise API lifecycle.”

Matt McLarty, MuleSoft

“Seeing how AsyncAPI has blossomed has been incredible. Its progress has been guided by two key principles in my opinion: a focus on solving real world problems, and a focus on community. As the world of synchronous APIs and event-based communication converges, AsyncAPI plays a vital role in levelling the API playing field.”

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more.  The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page:  https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact

Jennifer Cloer
for Linux Foundation 
503-867-2304
jennifer@storychangesculture.com

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The Linux Foundation and the TODO Group Announce Call for Proposals for OSPOCon and the OSPO Landscape

OSPOCon is an event dedicated to creating better, more efficient open source ecosystems.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 23, 2020The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, along with co-host the TODO Group, an open group of organizations who collaborate on practices, tools and other ways to run successful and effective open source programs and projects, has opened its Call for Proposals for OSPOCon.  The event will take place September 29 – October 1 in Dublin, Ireland, alongside Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference 2021. The TODO Group has also launched an OSPO Landscape as a resource for the community to learn more about OSPOs. The community is encouraged to contribute to the landscape.

OSPOCon is a new event, dedicated to those working to create a center of competency for open source in their organizations in order to join together to overcome challenges through sharing experiences, best practices, and tooling. Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) face many obstacles, such as ensuring high-quality and frequent releases, engaging with developer communities, and contributing back to other projects effectively. Collaborating together with others working on the same concerns helps the entire ecosystem improve.

“I am thrilled to be a part of the inaugural OSPOCon and see it brought to life to support the many hardworking and dedicated people involved in creating and sustaining OSPOs,” said Chris Aniszczyk, co-founder of the TODO Group and CTO at The Linux Foundation. “The impact OSPOs are having grows every day as they become a strategic function for organizations, from companies to governments to research institutions. Their contributions are tremendously valued and we look forward to furthering their abilities to collaborate, grow, and learn from each other.”

Proposals to speak at OSPOCon are being accepted now through June 13 at 11:59pm PDT.

Submission types requested include:

  • Session Presentation (~40-50 minutes in length)
  • Panel Discussion (~40-50 minutes in length)
  • Birds of a Feather Session (BoFs are typically held in the evenings, (~45 minutes – 1 hour in length)
  • Tutorial (~1.5 hours in length)
  • Lightning Talk (~5-10 minutes in length)

Suggested Topics include:

Open Source Program Management

  • Creation and Best Practices of Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs)
  • Consuming and Contributing to Open Source
  • Managing Competing Corporate Interests while Driving Coherent Communities
  • How to Vet the Viability of OS Projects
  • Internal vs External Developer Adoption
  • Handling License Obligations in Organizations
  • Open Source Corporate Sustainability

All interested parties are welcome to submit proposals. Those submitting will be notified of a decision by Thursday, July 22. To learn more and/or submit, please click here.

OSPOCon will be presented as a hybrid event – attendees can join and participate in person or virtually. Registration will open in late Spring 2021.  To receive an email alert when registration opens, please click here. The Linux Foundation provides diversity and need-based registration scholarships for this event to anyone that needs it; for information on eligibility please click here. Visit our website and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn for all the latest event updates and announcements.

Sponsor:
OSPOCon offers two sponsorship levels for your consideration, Co-host and Supporter.  To see all sponsorship benefits, please click here or email us here.

Members of the press who would like to request a media pass should contact Kristin O’Connell.

About The Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and industry adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation Events are where the world’s leading technologists meet, collaborate, learn and network in order to advance innovations that support the world’s largest shared technologies.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

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Media Contact:
Kristin O’Connell
The Linux Foundation
koconnell@linuxfoundation.org

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