Today we’re excited to announce another community initiative - the Open Source Software Security community (oss-security). This project is an ongoing effort to manage security information in open source software by building on the collaborative foundation of the open source model.

The purpose of oss-security is to encourage public discussion of security flaws, concepts and practices in the open source community. We don’t want to simply be an information clearinghouse, or to replace any of the current security lists and groups. The goal is to fill an existing vacuum by encouraging active participation of those interested in the ideas and unique challenges in securing open source software. This includes activities such as flaw discovery, understanding, reporting and overall best practices.

The oss-security community was initially founded by individuals from Foresight Linux, Mandriva, Openwall and Red Hat, and has since grown to include contributions from many other projects and individuals. The computing resources are currently graciously donated by the Openwall Project.

If you have an interest in the open source security space, we encourage you to participate in the oss-security community by adding content to the wiki, contributing to mailing-list discussions or joining us on IRC.

More information can be found on the group’s wiki page here.