Towards openLCA 2.0: Invitation to join the openLCA consortium
A message from Andreas Ciroth, founder, GreenDelta, 27 Sept 2015
openLCA is since more than 7 years the open source software for Life Cycle and Sustainability Assessment, fully transparent and free, developed by GreenDelta.
Meanwhile, the software is a fully featured LCA software fit for professional use, fastest for large LCA systems, offering best-in-class interoperability, with broadest support of import and export formats for example, the widest selection of LCA and sustainability databases, and with some unique features such as regionalized LCIA modelling. openLCA is increasingly recognised and used, worldwide. For several relevant institutions and enterprises, openLCA is the main LCA modelling software, and also often used for data collection and database creation, and teaching.
This is for us of course great to see, but at the same time, we feel this puts also some responsibility on us, to continue the development of openLCA in a way that meets user needs. We therefore decided to “open up” the openLCA organisation, and to establish an openLCA consortium.
The plan for the consortium is as follows: For a yearly fee, consortium members will get advanced information about openLCA. Regular meetings, twice per year, will be used to discuss developments for openLCA and developments in the openLCA user community and also in life cycle approaches “outside” of openLCA as far as relevant. Most importantly probably, consortium members will be able to decide about developments for openLCA, for the coming year, which will then be paid from the consortium fees. Of course, consortium members will also get recognition as supporters of openLCA, if this is interesting. This way, openLCA developments are indeed opened up since consortium members can co-decide about them.
The consortium is, on the other side, also a way to ensure the long-term sustainability of the openLCA project, which so far was evolving from specific development projects paid for by interested clients. These projects have so far been “just coming”, and we are really happy and also grateful for these projects which are still going on and continuing, but we feel that a consortium could provide a more long-term perspective. Plus, there has often been the need for larger projects than the budget of one individual client; the consortium could also be a way to bundle interests and to jointly develop a larger solution. Of course, openLCA will remain an open source and free software.
This consortium idea is not totally new but is quite often implemented for open source projects; examples include e.g. the eclipse (https://eclipse.org/org/foundation/) or the Mozilla / Firefox project (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/).
If you think this idea is of interest to you, please contact me or my colleague Franziska Möller (in cc). We are of course also happy to organise e.g. a web meeting to discuss details.
Regarding timeline, our idea is to establish the consortium with start of the next year, therefore a timely reaction is very much appreciated. Also, your input would be appreciated regarding details of the consortium, because we should not prescribe all details but rather be open for discussion and input from first members. We also have more specific ideas regarding the consortium structure (associated and full members), the yearly fees (less than e.g. for The Sustainability Consortium, but more than for a usual, non-open source LCA software), and a possible overall governance structure, which I would be happy to put for discussion.
Thanks a lot, we are looking very much forward to your feedback,
Andreas
On behalf of the entire openLCA development team