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I am a candidate for the “Affiliate” seat in the 2025 #OpenSource Initiative (OSI) Board of Directors election.
I am running on a Shared Platform for OSI Reform with @richardfontana
You can read that shared platform here: https://codeberg.org/OSI-Reform-Platform/platform#readme
I will post news and updates about the campaign here and on this blog post (that will be updated regularly until the voting closes):
https://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2025/02/28/osi-board-election.html
@bkuhn @richardfontana I think I agree to all of this except the five-ten year study aspect. Everyone already knows what real "open source" AI is, just be brave and get the OSI to formally state it. Best of luck to you!
@purpleidea
We picked that range because that's about how long the OSD itself took to go from "We should have a Definition" to being finalized. Really OSD took about 15, but some would say 5 and others would say 10, so we said 5-10.
@bkuhn I gotcha. But we learned a lot since then, and it's pretty obvious to me that a brain like Fontana could write a new OSAID in like 5 min.
I agree @richardfontana is one of the most brilliant individuals in the FOSS community.
However, for complex and new issues that change the nature of (at least some forms of) computing, there is absolutely no substitute for spending *lots* of wall-clock time thinking and considering before coming to final conclusions.
@bkuhn @richardfontana Regarding item 2 of the proposal: I participated in the 'Consistency WG' which was chartered with reviewing the 130+ existing OSI-approved licenses to find attributes that were potentially non-OSD-compliant, or caused problems in other areas.
We spent quite a lot of our volunteer time doing this, including creating a document of recommendations to the board (which went so far as to propose creation of a 'v2' of the "license list" which formally recognized that many previously-approved licenses should not have been), but even as a member of that WG I have no idea what happened after that. It appears from my vantage point that our efforts were wasted.
Kevin, thanks for sharing this. I had heard vaguely about that but very glad to have this info. The good news is that the work need not start from scratch, it sounds like!
@bkuhn @richardfontana this is great. Good luck.
@bkuhn @richardfontana Oh hell yes! These reforms are needed.
@bkuhn @richardfontana Hey, Bradley, we already started a review of old licenses a year ago. It's been taking some time since there are a LOT of old licenses. I take it this is something you'd want to be involved in?
Catch: we're using proprietary software to track the review.
@fuzzychef wrote:
> this is something you'd want to be involved in?
I'd like to take a step back & design the right structure. I'd prefer a non-partisan “Appeals Court” model for this, triggered by written appeal requests, rather than blanket review done in same manner as the original license approvals.
IOW, I hope OSI'll establish a check-and-balance procedure on the entire existing license review process.
But I'm open minded on the methods & means: Glad to discuss more if I'm elected!
@fuzzychef wrote
> [OSI is] using proprietary software to track the [license] review.
I'm flabbergasted at how many important volunteer opportunities at #OSI mandate proprietary software use.
It's hard to avoid proprietary software in nonprofit management but FOSS nonprofits should make accommodations for staff & volunteers who refuse on ethical grounds. FOSS orgs mandating proprietary software is akin to an animal rights org requiring staff to eat meat for lunch.
@fuzzychef @bkuhn @richardfontana We completed that review months ago and it's been mostly crickets since.
@kevin @bkuhn @richardfontana We completed Phase I. You'll be getting email soon as to whether you want to work on Phase II. Stuff got delayed by the amount of attention that OSAID needed.
