Opening up the Open Source Initiative

One of the ironies of open source over the years has been that the organisation formed to “educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source”, the Open Source Initiative, was itself *perceived to be* something of a closed shop [see the comments for clarification on this point].

That is set to change as the OSI has publicly launched its plan to encourage greater participation by shifting to a membership model and elected board members. The plan was announced during a session at the Open Source Business Conference (slides) and is part of an effort to focus on the second half of the organisation’s mission statement: “to build bridges among different constituencies in the open source community”.

As OSI director Simon Phipps explains in an interview with The H, the plan is to begin welcoming existing open source-related organisations into an affiliate programme, staring with non-profit open source foundations (hopefully by OSCON), followed by for-profit organisations (but not corporations) and government bodies. There will also be a separate Corporate Advisory Board for corporations, and a Personal Affiliate Scheme for individuals.