Historically the OSI was run fairly barebones as a volunteer organization. It has slowly moved away from a volunteer run organization and volunteer board doing a lot of the work to hiring its first Executive Director and 5 professional staff today: Open Source Initiative names first Executive Director – Open Source Initiative
What are your thoughts about the progress towards a professionally staffed organization that is able to fulfill OSI’s mission? What is missing? What can we do more to ensure volunteers aren’t over burdened with work?
I have expressed my position on continuing the good work we have done in the previous years in my post A Vision for OSI’s Future. I have backed the transition and acted accordingly.
It must be reminded that staff has a cost and must be backed by a corresponding budget. We have been very careful in diversifying the sources of funding so that no particular donor could pull strings and force us into positions that were not supported by consensus in the Board or even try to have privileged access to the Board.
The staff and current officers, with the backing of the Board, and surely mine if I am re-elected, are busy delivering on that and the achievements are already significant. It’s a long process that pre-dates my election and for sure my tenure as Chair, it needs to be completed with determination. Protecting and increasing the credibility of OSI as a capable and reliable actor in the space is a prerequisite.
Although I don’t have Carlo’s Board experience, as an outside observer, I agree with his assessment. I think movement to a professional staff has been a huge improvement for OSI. And maintaining that staff, and acquiring the sources of funding to do so, is an important continuing goal for OSI.
I appreciate this question, and – having enjoyed 3 years of sitting things out after 6 years of service – am in the process of writing a blog post to share what I want for the organization, in light of the current election and candidates.
A big part of what I want is for OSI to stay the course with professionalizing.
When I joined the board in 2016, there were factions who had very different views on this very topic. Frankly, I attribute OSI’s lackluster advocacy and performance, as we saw the “rights ratchet” picking up steam in ~2018, to our failure as a board to coalesce on a direction and move forward. That’s why I drafted an organizational development proposal in April of 2018, and spent the next 4 years seeing that project through, culminating in the transition from General Manager + President to Executive Director + Chair, a change I view as a critical symbolic threshold in moving away from being a working board.
And while I haven’t agreed with everything OSI has done since my departure, I feel confident saying that it is a more effective advocate for open source now than it was in the 2010s.
I don’t have the inside view anymore, so it’s hard for me to offer specific views on what might be missing, and what more should be done…
… But, suffice it to say, I view the continued professionalization of the organization to be mission critical!
Warmly,
Robin (the artist formerly known as Josh Simmons)
The OSI today is a far more desirable organization than it was in the few years following 1998. I head a small organization in Japan that manages the “Open Source” trademark. Originally, I intended to donate the Open Source trademark I had registered in Japan to the OSI. However, at that time, the OSI was unstable, with several internal conflicts. There were particular individuals who each held their own ideal vision of freedom, and they often clashed. To maintain the stability of the term “Open Source,” I believed it would be safer for a Japanese entity to manage the trademark in Japan. If the OSI had been operating as it does now back then, I doubt I would have gone through as much trouble here in Japan.
That said, I can’t definitively say that the current organization is ideal in every way.
The OSI’s mission is extremely simple: to continue safeguarding the term “Open Source.” Until a few years ago, I thought carrying out this mission wasn’t overly complicated, but the emergence of “Source Available Licenses” such as SSPL and BUSL changed the landscape. Now we live in the era of AI. The world likely has far higher expectations of the OSI than ever before, and I’m not sure whether the current setup can fully meet those expectations. To be honest, I was really impressed that Stefan and others did such a fine job with last year’s OSAID World Tour, though I also think the organization might have needed a bit more staff.
I support professional staff who are experienced and who can help enable the Board to carry out the Mission, Core Values and Commitments of the OSI. Having professional staff not only helps alleviate any work burden, but it should also help elevate the OSI on the worldwide stage. Professional staff can provide more structure to processes and documentation, ensure matters are being actioned with appropriate, consistent, and timely follow up, and be the face of the OSI.
This is chicken-and-egg with funding, ofc. I have a thoroughly unscientific rule of thumb that it takes as long to climb out of a hole as to dig it. OSI was under-resourced for 20+ years. We’re four years into catching up. Kudos and many thanks to @bluesomewhere@stefano and all of you who worked so hard to right the ship. With another four years of dedicated effort we’ll be that much stronger. In another 15+ we’ll have hopefully caught up to where we need to be to live up to the potential that Open Source represents.
As the voluntary backbone of the organization, both professional staff and volunteers(hybrid) play crucial roles and can support each other, especially since OSI is not as financially strong as expected. While building the entire organization on a professional structure would be beneficial, it is important to be realistic—financial sustainability should be prioritized before expanding staffing. Once a roughly investable level of stability is achieved, long-term staffing can be planned more effectively. This approach also benefits staff by ensuring career stability and reducing turnover. Factors like staff retention, induction, and orientation are crucial, as high turnover can be disruptive to the organization’s operations.
My previous board experience was with the Internet Society (ISOC) and was on the board for one term of 3 years from 2016-2019.
ISOC has a professional administrative setup and that is funded from income from PIR (the domain registrar of .org and .ngo).
The value of a professional administrative support is that the board can then focus on the big picture and policy perspectives and based on those, providing guidance and direction setting to the staff. The board could also undertake fund raising and all of the related activities, freeing the staff to focus on the public education, policy implementation and executing on the goals set by the board.
It probably is useful to consider the mix of donors (a healthy and even ratio of corporates, philanthropies, well-wishers, foundations and NGOs) along with membership fees and events.
Consistency in action, showing up when needed and being the thought leader in this important open source licensing space cannot be left to chance and purely on unpaid volunteers.
With another four years of dedicated effort we’ll be that much stronger. In another 15+ we’ll have hopefully caught up to where we need to be to live up to the potential that Open Source represents.