Google are sponsoring their participation in oCERT, a new form of computer emergency response team style service for the open source community. The service aims to “help both large infrastructures, like major distributions, and smaller projects that can't afford a full-blown security team and/or security resources”.
It’s an interesting development, though only time will tell as to how it develops and what value it adds. In practice many of these circles end up doing quite different things from what they originally expected to do.
FIRST, for example, has branched out into running corporate executive programmes, a far cry from its original techie focus. eema dropped its original title of “European Electronic Messaging Association” because it was too restrictive and now aims to address anything to do with identity and e-security. The Open Group has transformed itself many times since its predecessor, X/Open, was set up the early 1980s to agree a non-proprietary operating system standard for minicomputer vendors.
I wish them well. In the security world you live on your contacts. We can’t have enough of these circles, especially open, free ones.