I was interviewed about my upcoming FOSDEM keynote and gave this concise summary of the background to the changes I’m working on with the Board of the Open Source Initiative.
Why exactly did OSI decide to reorganize its governance from a board-only organization into a member-based structure? How will this new governance allow OSI to address its mission better?
As you’ll read at its website, “the Open Source Initiative is a non-profit corporation with global scope formed in 1998 to educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open source community.” Despite the breadth of that mission, it has focussed almost exclusively on approval of licenses as compliant with the Open Source Definition. The Board felt that it was time to return to that initial mission and work on the broader goals too.
We hope that as a consequence of the switch to a member organisation, OSI will be able to educate, advocate and build bridges as well as continuing as a “standards body for licenses”. Our success opposing CPTN’s attempt to buy Novell’s patents (among other things we did in 2011) has given a hint of the force that could be unleashed for software freedom by having a neutral and uniting venue for education and advocacy.
Come along at noon on February 4th for more.
Filed under: OSI | Tagged: FOSDEM | Comments Off on ☆ OSI Reform at FOSDEM
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