SPDX Becomes Internationally Recognized Standard for Software Bill of Materials

Backed by many of the world’s largest companies for more than a decade, SPDX formally becomes an internationally recognized ISO/IEC JTC 1 standard during a transformational time for software and supply chain security

SAN FRANCISCO, September 9, 2021 – The Linux Foundation, Joint Development Foundation, and the SPDX community, today announced the Software Package Data Exchange® (SPDX®) specification has been published as ISO/IEC 5962:2021 and recognized as the international open standard for security, license compliance, and other software supply chain artifacts. ISO/IEC JTC 1 is an independent, non-governmental standards body. 

Intel, Microsoft, Siemens, Sony, Synopsys, VMware, and WindRiver are just a small sample of the companies already using SPDX to communicate Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) information in policies or tools to ensure compliant, secure development across global software supply chains. 

“SPDX plays an important role in building more trust and transparency in how software is created, distributed, and consumed throughout supply chains. The transition from a de-facto industry standard to a formal ISO/IEC JTC 1 standard positions SPDX for dramatically increased adoption in the global arena,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director, the Linux Foundation. “SPDX is now perfectly positioned to support international requirements for software security and integrity across the supply chain.” 

Between eighty and ninety percent (80%-90%) of a modern application is assembled from open source software components. An SBOM accounts for the software components contained in an application — open source, proprietary, or third-party — and details their provenance, license, and security attributes. SBOMs are used as a part of a foundational practice to track and trace components across software supply chains. SBOMs also help to proactively identify software issues and risks and establish a starting point for their remediation.

SPDX results from ten years of collaboration from representatives across industries, including the leading Software Composition Analysis (SCA) vendors – making it the most robust, mature, and adopted SBOM standard. 

“As new use cases have emerged in the software supply chain over the last decade, the SPDX community has demonstrated its ability to evolve and extend the standard to meet the latest requirements. This really represents the power of collaboration on work that benefits all industries,” said Kate Stewart, SPDX tech team co-lead. “SPDX will continue to evolve with open community input, and we invite everyone, including those with new use cases, to participate in SPDX’s evolution and securing the software supply chain.”  

For more information on how to participate in and benefit from SPDX, please visit: https://spdx.dev.

To learn more about how companies and open source projects are using SPDX, recordings from the “Building Cybersecurity into the Software Supply Chain” Town Hall that was held on August 18th are available and can be viewed at: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/supply-chain-town-hall/ 

ISO/IEC JTC 1 is an independent, non-governmental international organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. Its membership represents more than 165 national standards bodies with experts who share knowledge and develop voluntary, consensus-based, market-relevant international standards that support innovation and provide solutions to global challenges.

Supporting Comments

Intel

“Software security and trust are critical to our Industry’s success. Intel has been an early participant in the development of the SPDX specification and utilizes SPDX both internally and externally for a number of software use-cases,” said Melissa Evers, Vice President – Software and Advanced Technology Group, General Manager of Strategy to Execution, Intel.

Microsoft

“Microsoft has adopted SPDX as our SBOM format of choice for software we produce,” says Adrian Diglio, Principal Program Manager of Software Supply Chain Security at Microsoft. “SPDX SBOMs make it easy to produce U.S. Presidential Executive Order compliant SBOMs, and the direction that SPDX is taking with the design of their next gen schema will help further improve the security of the software supply chain.”

Siemens

“With ISO/IEC 5962:2021 we have the first official standard for metadata of software packages. It’s natural that SPDX is that standard, as it’s been the de facto standard for a decade. This will make license compliance in the supply chain much easier, especially because several open source tools like FOSSology, ORT, scancode, and sw360 already support SPDX,” said Oliver Fendt, senior manager, open source at Siemens. 

Sony

”The Sony team uses various approaches to managing open source compliance and governance,” says Hisashi Tamai, Senior Vice President, Deputy President of R&D Center, Representative of the Software Strategy Committee, Sony Group Corporation. “An example is the use of an OSS management template sheet that is based on SPDX Lite, a compact subset of the SPDX standard. It is important for teams to be able to quickly review the type, version, and requirements of software, and using a clear standard is a key part of this process.”

Synopsys

“The Black Duck team from Synopsys has been involved with SPDX since its inception, and I personally had the pleasure of coordinating the activities of the project’s leadership for more than a decade. Representatives from scores of companies have contributed to the important work of developing a standard way of describing and communicating the content of a software package,” said Phil Odence, General Manager, Black Duck Audits.

VMware

“SPDX is the essential common thread among tools under the Automating Compliance Tooling (ACT) Umbrella. SPDX enables tools written in different languages and for different software targets to achieve coherence and interoperability around SBOM production and consumption. SPDX is not just for compliance, either; the well-defined and ever-evolving spec is also able to represent security and supply chain implications. This is incredibly important for the growing community of SBOM tools as they aim to thoroughly represent the intricacies of modern software,” said Rose Judge, ACT TAC Chair and open source engineer at VMware.

Wind River

“The SPDX format greatly facilitates the sharing of software component data across the supply chain. Wind River has been providing a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) to its customers using the SPDX format for the past 8 years. Often customers will request SBOM data in a custom format. Standardizing on SPDX has enabled us to deliver a higher quality SBOM at a lower cost,” said Mark Gisi, Wind River Open Source Program Office Director and OpenChain Specification Chair.

About SPDX

SPDX is an open standard for communicating software bill of material information, including provenance, license, security, and other related information. SPDX reduces redundant work by providing common formats for organizations and communities to share important data, thereby streamlining and improving compliance, security, and dependability. For more information, please visit us at spdx.org.

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