New open source group provides substantial industry insight at MWC - here's hoping they keep up the effort to keep non-members informed.

March 20, 2015

2 Min Read
Will Open Source Groups Keep Windows Open?

OPNFV's coming-out party at Mobile World Congress has been judged a success, says its Director of NFV Heather Kirksey. In a blog released today, she points to large crowds at both the social and informative events hosted by the group as an indication of interest in its work and particularly applauds the community nature of the effort to this point.

The full blog can be viewed here and it includes a link to a recording of the panel discussion on Open Platform for NFV Project Inc. featuring five of its board members, including AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) 's Margaret Chiosi, and Hui Deng, principal staff at China Mobile Ltd. (NYSE: CHL)'s Research Institute.

The panel starts with some long-winded introductions -- did you know Margaret Chiosi got into a music conservatory but chose engineering and that Martin Backstrom, head of industry sector datacom for Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC), went skiing for four days before Barcelona? -- but once you get past that, it provides a detailed and interesting look at what OPNFV is doing, from multiple perspectives. (You can access it directly here.)

The goal of the session, as stated by Intel's Heather Rivera, the marketing chair of OPNFV, is to attract new members to the organization.

Read more about NFV strategies and the role of open source in our NFV section here on Light Reading.

What I find more intriguing, however, is the view of OPNFV it provides to those not engaged in the process. As the telecom community embraces open source processes, it's a little less clear how those who are unable to engage directly in the process, for whatever reason, will stay abreast of development details.

Thus far, the Linux Foundation , under whose auspices OPNFV was created, has done an excellent job of keeping the media apprised of the group's progress, and here at Light Reading we'll continue to cover the group closely. But the level of information the media can provide in blogs such as this is limited and certainly not at engineering level.

I think it will be a challenge in the future for the telecom sector to continue to track what happens at OPNFV and other open source groups, as well as industry fora. I, for one, hope sessions like the one recorded in Barcelona continue to happen on a regular basis, not just for recruitment purposes but also to keep an open source project open to the broader view.

— Carol Wilson, Editor-at-Large, Light Reading

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