Originally published at: OSI’s board of directors in 2025: details about the elections – Open Source Initiative
The OSI board of directors is renewing 3 of its seats with an open election process among its full individual members and affiliates.
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I strongly encourage folks to vote (and renew your membership if you need to) and even to run for seats on the board. If you’re here, you care about the OSI’s mission, and you can be a bigger part of it.
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Hey @nick, question for you: How many people are eligible to vote in this election? How many (approximately) do we expect to vote, based on past elections?
@chadwhitacre the full results of past elections are published on the blog.
The most recent results: 2022, 2023, 2024.
Roughly, ~30-40 people vote for the Affiliate elections and about 150-180 for the Individual.
More results using the search, if you want to do some archeology 
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Thank you, @stefano! 
Edited to add:
How many people are eligible to vote in this election?
Looks like about 5,000, yes? Growing rapidly! Interesting that turnout in absolute numbers has stayed pretty much flat.
| Year Ending | Members | Individual Votes (%) |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 200 | |
| 2022 | 1,000 | 164 (16.4) |
| 2023 | 2,800 | 194 (6.9) |
| 2024 | 5,000 | 158 (3.2) |
Edit 2:
Oh! The membership numbers probably include Basic members, who neither pay dues nor can vote. Correct? How many eligible voters are there?
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The Affiliate organizations haven’t grown much in the past 3 years so I wouldn’t count its % against the total members. Off the top of my head I think we added 4-6 new affiliates in the past 3 years. There are 86 affiliate organizations in total, one vote per organization.
You’re right that the individual members who vote are Supporting and Professional. Of those I believe there are around 500-600 in total at the moment.
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The general Board of Directors page has this text:
The ten person OSI board is composed of:
- Four directors elected by OSI Individual Members for two-years terms.
- Four directors elected by OSI Affiliate Members for three-years terms.
- Four directors appointed for two-years terms by the board itself.
I suppose “ten” is a typo, as three fours make twelve. 
The current Board of Directors page lists eleven members:
| Name | Seat Type | End of Term |
|---|---|---|
| Catharina Maracke | Individual | October, 2025 |
| Chris Aniszczyk | Individual | March, 2026 |
| Josh Berkus | Individual | March, 2026 |
| Carlo Piana | Affiliate | March, 2025 |
| Pamela Chestek | Affiliate | March, 2025 |
| Anne-Marie Scott | Affiliate | March, 2026 |
| Thierry Carrez | Affiliate | March, 2027 |
| Tracy Hinds | Appointed | October, 2025 |
| Justin Colannino | Appointed | October, 2025 |
| Gaël Blondelle | Appointed | October, 2027 |
| Sayeed Choudhury | Appointed | October, 2027 |
I find this in the details blog post:
- The affiliate organizations will elect one director
- Individual members will elect two directors
I see two affiliates with expiring terms. Why is only one being replaced?
It seems that one individual seat is vacant, but I don’t see another with an expiring term (unless this is Catharina?). Why are two individuals being elected?
In general, what explains the staggering of the terms between March and October?
My goal is to understand the composition of the board I will be joining, if elected. 
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I believe the blog post had a typo and it’s the other way around, Chad. There are two affiliate seats available this cycle. Pam Chestak terms out for having served 6 years in an Affiliate seat, and Carlo Piana’s Affiliate seat is up for election. The open individual seat for this election cycle was previously held and then vacated by Aeva Black.
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Thanks, Tracy. Can we get the blog post corrected? [Edit: looks like it’s been corrected.]
And I guess there will there be another individual election when Catharina’s term expires in October, yes?
[Updating to work around platform limitations on repeated replies.]
Proponents of the OSI Reform Platform have generated quite a bit of heat, but where there is heat there can also be light. Bradley’s second point in his recent post about election irregularities seems valid to me, that misstating the seats in the election materially affects its fairness:
If we had known there were two Affiliate seats and just one Member seat, Debian (an OSI Affiliate) would have nominated Luke a week early to the Affiliate seat.
Bradley’s two proposed solutions are to:
- briefly reopen nominations and extend the voting deadline, or
- end advisory elections in favor of simple self-perpetuation.
I’m willing to continue with the election as currently constituted, but I also want to go on record that I think Bradley has a valid point, and I would be fine with either of his proposed solutions.
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Before I get in there, I think we used to do approval voting and I saw someone mention ranked choice. Can someone confirm which one it is?
(It changes voting strategy a little bit!)
The membership numbers have grown significantly in 2024, likely driven by the increasing discussions around AI and open source. This presents a great opportunity to strengthen community engagement. We should leverage this momentum by hosting online events, seminars, and participating in international organisations. Collaborations with universities, research institutes, and tech giants, along with well-planned social media marketing, will further amplify our reach.
Additionally, structured open-source training and certification programs for industries such as law, compliance, auditing, and cybersecurity …so on could provide immense value. These initiatives won’t just expand the community but also generate substantial revenue, increase global awareness, and attract angel investors, sponsors, and strategic partners.
As the saying goes, ‘numbers speak.’ Community building isn’t just about growth—it’s a key driver of long-term success.
Sorry for that: Your message made me realize that we announced the voting algorithm only on the results page, while the wording on the Elections page wasn’t clear. I’ve changed that page.
To confirm, for 2025, like in 2024 and 2023 we’ll use the Scottish STV.
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