As I found in this forum entry&id=2314977&articleid=2314977#2314977 on OpenBC, the two german companies Enterprise Consulting GmbH and OTRS GmbH started working on a joint venture in February that aims at extending the free ticket system OTRS to an extensive ITIL tool.
For 2006, they plan on doing first steps towards ITIL certification. Among other features, OTRS is getting role-based access control, transactions and interfaces to 3rd party applications.
Early next year, OTRS GmbH is going to implement the ITIL processes "change management" and "configuration management" based on a central integrated data model, the "configuration management database" (CMDB). Implementation of release management and service delivery processes are following goals.
It's always good to see free software targetting the professional IT management tools market. OTRS had a successful start as a trouble ticket system and has every chance to be a good contender in IT process and service level management.