The Open Solutions Alliance is hoping to shake off some growing pains as it moves through its second year, according to its president, Dominic Sartorio.

The Open Solutions Alliance (OSA), a nonprofit, vendor-neutral consortium dedicated to driving interoperability and adoption of comprehensive open solutions, today announced its worldwide Customer Forum Series.

Launched in February, the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) came together to help open-source application vendors make their products work better together and gain visibility among enterprise users.

I must disagree that the talk of including proprietary players in the work of making open source software more integrated and acceptable in the enterprise is something new or attributable to Gold.

"In an effort to promote more communication between open source users and vendors, the nonprofit Open Solutions Alliance, Inc. (OSA) is opening up its membership to customers."

A free, open-source Windows "clone" - ReactOS - that has been in development for over a decade has caught the eye of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

A student at a Russian high school the president visited recently gave Mr Medvedev a brief overview of the project - and asked him for 1m euros.

"Interoperability remains one of the top challenges for our customers, and through our current alliance with Microsoft we are providing solutions to meet this challenge," said Susan Heystee, vice president and general manager of global strategic alliances for Novell.

The Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) is adding a chapter based in Europe, the group is expected to announce Tuesday.

The incoming president of an alliance of open-source companies hopes he can persuade big-name proprietary ISVs to join rivals in his group to further interoperability.