OSI election ends with unsatisfying results [LWN.net]

By Joe Brockmeier
March 21, 2025

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has announced the results of its recent board of directors election. Ruth Suehle and McCoy Smith are new to the board, while Carlo Piana will serve another term. The results, however, seem tainted in the eyes of some participants and observers. The election has been plagued by missteps from the beginning. It has culminated with the exclusion of three candidates for failing to meet a requirement to sign the OSI board agreement, which was added after the election was over and before results were tallied or announced.

OSI board of directors

OSI is a 501(c)(3) non-profit founded in 1998. It, of course, published the Open Source Definition (OSD) which is the litmus test that open-source licenses are judged by. Its primary function these days seems to be around approving licenses via its license review process, open-source advocacy, as well as policy and standards work.

OSI's board has 12 directors. Four of the board members are directly appointed by the board itself. According to its elections page, this is "to ensure that the resulting Board has an optimal balance of skills, knowledge, and demographics". Board-appointed directors serve two-year terms. Four of the board seats are affiliate seats, which are nominated and voted on by OSI's affiliate members, which are the organizations "engaged in and with the open source community". That includes projects like the Apache Software Foundation, Debian, GNOME, KDE e.V., the Linux Foundation, and many others. Affiliate directors serve three-year terms. Finally, the other four board members are nominated and voted on by the individual members of OSI. That would be OSI supporters who pay a yearly membership fee (starting at $50). Directors nominated by individual members serve two-year terms. No director is allowed to serve more than six consecutive years before being required to sit out a year before serving again.

OSI has elections annually, to replace directors whose terms are ending, with the timeline determined by the board in December and publication of the timeline for the election in January. This year, the elections were announced on January 22, by OSI head of community Nick Vidal, with nominations running through February 17 for one affiliate director and two individual directors. That was later corrected to two affiliate directors and one individual director, after nominations had closed, with an update inserted into the blog post:

Thankfully, a candidate caught the mistake in time, and we have corrected the ballots before elections opened. To prevent similar errors in the future, we have updated our procedures to improve accuracy. We appreciate your understanding and your participation in the process!

The elections, however, are non-binding. OSI's board makes the final determination whether to accept the results and seat the winners.

Election missteps

Typically, OSI elections draw little attention. However, the OSI has received more attention than usual in the past year over the Open Source AI Definition (OSAID), which LWN covered in October. Several people critical of OSAID decided to stand for the board, including Debian developer Luke Faraone, who initially wanted to be nominated as an affiliate candidate. However, since there was apparently only one affiliate seat open, they said that they decided to run for an individual seat instead.

Since Bradley Kuhn is also running for an Affiliate seat with a similar platform to me, especially with regards to the OSAID, I decided to run as part of an aligned "ticket" as an Individual Member to avoid contention for the 1 Affiliate seat.

Faraone submitted their self-nomination "around 9pm" US Pacific Time on February 17. Their candidacy was rejected, though, due to missing a poorly-advertised deadline of 11:59 p.m. UTC on that day. While the date was well communicated, the time was not. It was only present in one of two emails about the election that were sent to members. (I received copies of these emails from Faraone and a member of the OSI board.) It was apparently also mentioned during information sessions run by OSI for potential directors, but Faraone did not attend those. (Update: Faraone's post made reference to post-nomination meetings, rather than pre-nomination meetings, which of course they could not attend as their nomination was not accepted.)

Faraone said that it seemed arbitrary and capricious to govern elections by UTC when the organization is based in California. They urged OSI to reconsider the policy and allow them to stand for election, but the organization declined to do so.

Kuhn, and Richard Fontana, ran on an "OSI reform" platform that sought to repeal the Open Source AI Definition (OSAID) and remove the "code of silence" from the board agreement. Specifically, the agreement requires board members to "support publicly all Board decisions, especially those that do not have unanimous consent".

On March 3, Kuhn published a lengthy blog post about problems with the OSI elections which said that this was unfair to candidates:

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. Instead, Debian's leadership, Luke, Fontana, and I had a complex discussion in the final week of nominations on how best to run as a "ticket of three". In that discussion, Debian leadership decided to nominate no one (instead of nominating Luke) precisely because I was already nominated on a platform that Debian supported, and Debian chose not to run a candidate against me for the (at the time, purported) one Affiliate seat available.

He argued that this impacted several affiliate organizations. Kuhn said he was nominated by four affiliates, because "if they nominated someone else, that candidate would be effectively running against me". At least one of those would have nominated a second person if it had been known at the time that there were two available seats and not only one. He called for OSI to reopen nominations and reset the election, but to no avail.

Kuhn has detailed a number of what he terms irregularities with the OSI election in his post. Some might be considered minor, such as a complaint about the order in which candidates are presented on the ballot, or the fact that only one nominating organization was listed for each candidate instead of listing all nominating organizations. One, in particular, seems fairly substantive and worth noting. Kuhn had reached out, by email, to likely voters in the affiliate category to promote his candidacy. In an apparent reaction to this, OSI sent out an email to affiliate voters that said it had learned a candidate was reaching out to voters "without their consent":

We do not give out affiliate emails for candidate reachouts, and understand that you did not consent to be spammed by candidates for this election cycle.

Candidates can engage with their fellow affiliates on our forums where we provide community management and moderation support, and in other public settings where our affiliates have opted to sign up and publicly engage.

Kuhn said that he spent between 12 and 14 hours researching to find the contacts at affiliate organizations to reach out to. The text of the email Kuhn sent to 55 people at affiliate organizations is included in his blog post. Kuhn complained that OSI had not given candidates any specific guidance about reaching out to voters, and said that it is not spam to "contact one's 'FOSS Neighbors' to learn their concerns when in a political campaign for an important position". What is considered "spam", of course, varies greatly from person to person. However, in my experience, Kuhn's lobbying affiliates for votes is not at all unusual. While I have never held an affiliate vote for an organization in OSI elections, I have been a voter for similar positions in other open-source foundations and can attest that other people have lobbied for my vote. Merely reaching out to voters once and asking for consideration does not seem beyond the pale in this type of election, nor unwelcome. If an affiliate voter is put off by this sort of campaigning, the obvious result would be that they vote for another candidate.

In the same post, Kuhn said that OSI should reopen the nominations or just forget elections entirely, since the elections are only advisory in any case.

OSI's halfway solution (i.e., a half-heartedly organized election that isn't really binding) seems designed to manufacture consent. OSI's Affiliates and paid individual Membership are given the impression they have electoral power, but it's an illusion. Giving up on the whole illusion would be the most transparent choice for OSI, and if the OSI would rather end these advisory elections and just self-perpetuate, I'd support that decision.

Board agreement

On March 19, Fontana, who was running for an individual seat, posted on the OSI Discourse forum that he had received an email asking him to sign the OSI board agreement before the results were announced. Kuhn wrote about this requirement on his blog the same day. Fontana and Kuhn objected to this, saying that it was explained during the orientation sessions that "signing the Board Agreement was a requirement to be seated as a director, but it was never stated that mere candidates were expected to sign".

OSI executive director Stefano Maffulli replied:

While the polls were open, we've heard that there may be candidates with no intention to sign the board agreement, which has become a mandatory requirement since you last served. We need to know who the actual candidates are before we run the STV calculation to determine the outcome of the vote. So for process efficiency, the board asked all candidates to confirm their good faith intention to serve on the board, so we can tell the software.

The board agreement only applies to seated members.

If the agreement applies only to seated members, it is puzzling that the OSI would require signing the agreement before a candidate has been elected. It seems akin to requiring political candidates to take an oath of office before an election, rather than doing so in order to be seated or asking job candidates to sign non-disparagement agreements before being offered a job instead of as part of onboarding paperwork.

Kuhn refused to use the proprietary Docusign service to sign the agreement, but returned an annotated PDF that struck out the requirement to publicly support all board decisions. Fontana attached an addendum that would allow and encourage public dissent "involving matters central to OSI's core mission and the public interest", as long as the member makes it clear that they are speaking in their personal capacity. It also would free directors to comment on decisions made prior to their tenure, and ensure that nothing in the board agreement would silence whistleblowing or contravene fiduciary duties to the OSI.

Thierry Carrez, a member of the board, defended the "code of silence" as standard practice in non-profit boards that he has served on. He asked Fontana how publicly complaining would help an organization like OSI, instead of hurting it. Fontana replied that it should be possible for a board member to express dissent in a respectful way rather than a false show of public unanimity or resigning from the board. Smith defended the requirement and said that disagree and commit is a "pretty common standard in the corporate world". Pamela Chestek, also a board member, and Casey Valk, who ran but did not win a seat, added support in the conversation for the board agreement's requirement to support board decisions.

Results and aftermath

Both Fontana and Kuhn said that they had returned a signed version of the board agreement prior to the stated deadline, but their signed versions were altered and apparently not delivered via OSI's preferred method of using Docusign. The OSI does not seem to have recognized those as valid, and votes for Kuhn and Fontana are not included in the public results. The announcement said that three candidates were excluded from the results, two for not signing the agreement and one for failing to meet the deadline, though it did not name the candidates who were excluded. The other candidate who seems to have been excluded is Bentley Hensel. His platform doesn't indicate any desire for radical change at OSI.

Chad Whitacre, who had run for the board in this election, wrote on the OSI forum that it was "unfortunate that OSI had to deal with such adversarial trolls in this election", though he acknowledged that the OSI had not helped itself by misstating the number of seats available for the election.

On social media, Kevin P. Fleming said that the entire process was confusing and poorly communicated, as well as placing requirements on candidates after votes had been cast. He said the people elected are good people, but "that's not the only measure of the process 'going well'". Maffulli replied that the candidates "excluded themselves" by not signing the board agreement. He allowed that there were bumps in the election process, and pointed to a decision by the board to create a retrospective on the election by April 19. Fleming followed up to suggest that the retrospective should be performed by independent members of the organization because the board members should not be analyzing their own behavior. Currently, it appears that board member Josh Berkus will be leading the retrospective.

Aaron Wolf pointed out that it isn't merely the candidates who have lost out: those who voted for them have been disenfranchised. He said that the only way forward with integrity would be to release the vote totals. Josh Triplett said that the board should have tallied the results, announced the winners, and then enforced the requirements. Failing to do that presents the appearance that the rule changes specifically targeted candidates that the current board does not like.

It doesn't *matter* if that was the real reason or not, it's the default and reasonable assumption anyone should make when the process of an election is changed on the fly in ways that *just so happen* to affect specific candidates. The process itself is now rightfully suspect, when it had no need to be.

The conversation has continued on social media, but nothing new has emerged to date. The OSI board seems content with its handling of the election, and it may never be known whether OSI's members and affiliates wanted Kuhn or Fontana on the board. That is deeply unfortunate, and undermines trust and goodwill in an organization that depends heavily on both. It is worth remembering that the OSI's authority to define what is, or isn't, open source is purely based on the willingness of others to follow its definition. It has no teeth to enforce the use of the term "open source". The respect for the OSD comes from a large community of people willing to police the use of the term, and to recognize the OSI's authority to approve (or not) new licenses.

It may well be that Fontana and Kuhn would have lost anyway, but we have no way of knowing. A cynical person might conclude that the last-minute requirement to sign the agreement was to disqualify one or both because they would have won otherwise; and that the OSI leadership was unwilling to have even a minority number of board members who might seek to steer the ship in a different direction. If that was the case, the board has the authority to simply treat the results as non-binding and it could have refused to seat unwelcome candidates without disqualifying them or using other machinations to pretend there was a fair election where there was not.

to post comments

One of the 'cynical people'

Posted Mar 21, 2025 22:41 UTC (Fri) by kpfleming (subscriber, #23250) [Link] (17 responses)

> A cynical person might conclude that the last-minute requirement to sign the agreement was to disqualify one or both because they would have won otherwise; and that the OSI leadership was unwilling to have even a minority number of board members who might seek to steer the ship in a different direction. If that was the case, the board has the authority to simply treat the results as non-binding and it could have refused to seat unwelcome candidates without disqualifying them or using other machinations to pretend there was a fair election where there was not.

In fact this is my largest concern; the email to the candidates to get them to sign the agreement appears to have been sent out after all the votes had been cast. A cynical person could reasonably believe that the OSI team ran a 'provisional' tally of the votes, saw what the likely results would be, and sent out this email in order to try to get the results to be different. There's no evidence of that, there likely won't be any evidence of that, and nobody is being accused of that.

Because, as the article rightly points out, the board had other options beyond changing the results of the purely-advisory election, there wouldn't have been any need to take such actions. If the board had just publicly stated that the election results indicated that the voters preferred a specific set of candidates, but that some of those candidates were deemed ineligible to be seated, and the board had used its discretion to seat alternate candidates, many of us would have been completely fine with that.

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 22, 2025 2:13 UTC (Sat) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642) [Link] (16 responses)

Kevin wrote:

“If the board had just publicly stated that the election results indicated that the voters preferred a specific set of candidates, but that some of those candidates were deemed ineligible to be seated, and the board had used its discretion to seat alternate candidates, many of us would have been completely fine with that.”

Possibly surprisingly, I am one of the people who would have been completely fine with that — even though I'm one of the 2025 candidates that may have won a seat only to not be appointed. As Kevin said, the results matter even if legitimately overridden.

While I would have hoped in such a situation that the OSI Directors — knowing our platform — would negotiate (post-election) with { Fontana, Luke, me } to change those 19 words (of the 727-word Board Agreement) to solve everyone's concerns, we'd have nevertheless gracefully (albeit sadly) accepted a refusal to negotiate if the true results were posted.

Both sides actually have the same BATNA: “we just don't get seated on the Board”. Fontana and I discussed running to that BATNA many times in the process, but we concluded that policy disagreements are best solved by political engagement and negotiated consensus — not each side running as fast as possible to their BATNAs.

Fontana and I are truly baffled that these 19 words, as drafted, are considered sacrosanct. I mean, the sentiment is right but the drafting just isn't good. Since they don't appear in the main article, I'll quote those 19 words [with context]:

“[Directors can expect each other] to Disagree during Board deliberation but support publicly all Board decisions, especially those that do not have unanimous consent.”

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 22, 2025 2:35 UTC (Sat) by rfontana (subscriber, #52677) [Link] (15 responses)

> “[Directors can expect each other] to Disagree during Board deliberation but support publicly all Board decisions, especially those that do not have unanimous consent.”

It took me a while to see the core drafting problem here. The way it's written, it suggests that disagreement can only take place "during Board deliberation", and *therefore* in public all you can do is express agreement with a decision that resulted from that possibly-contentious deliberation. Based on some comments from current OSI board members on the OSI's discussion forum, I think this is how the current board reads it. But I'm not sure that was the intent of whoever originally drafted this.

I've learned from these recent discussions about the principle of "collective responsibility" in nonprofit governance. This includes the idea that a board's members will all pledge to support the board's decisions. But this need not mean that the board's members have to *agree* with the decisions in public (it is acknowledged that they might not have agreed in deliberations). You can respectfully and responsibly dissent, in public, from a decision made by your board, and still *support* the decision as one that has been properly and finally made by the board.

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 22, 2025 21:27 UTC (Sat) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (14 responses)

> The way it's written, it suggests that disagreement can only take place "during Board deliberation", and *therefore* in public all you can do is express agreement with a decision that resulted from that possibly-contentious deliberation.

This is fairly typical in parliamentary systems (and probably others). Once you are part of the executive (the cabinet) then they speak as one voice. And that means supporting any decision in public, even if you disagree with it in private. If you don't like that you can simply not join the executive and stay an MP. If there's a decision you can't defend in public for whatever reason you can just resign and then say whatever you like.

The argument is that it doesn't help if the executive is seen to be internally divided and that decisions might not actually be final.

Of course enforcement is a thing, because "disagreeing" is such a fuzzy line, but every now and then ministers do actually resign because they can't support whatever decision was made.

(It gets exceptionally fuzzy in systems like the UK where ministers are also MPs that can vote on their own legislation, meaning they're actually wearing two hats at the same time. That's not a problem for the OSI though.)

So yeah, I'm thinking that the way it's interpreted is what was intended.

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 23, 2025 8:03 UTC (Sun) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (1 responses)

> If you don't like that you can simply not join the executive and stay an MP.

The other way, and frankly the way I expect a legitimate board to be run, is to agree to disagree, but decide to support the majority decision anyway. At least on topics where there was prior public disagreement.

I don't think there's a democratic parliament out there (i.e. excluding mock parliaments like China's, or autocraties like Turkey's these days) where you need to sign a formal statement that you will do the former but not the latter, otherwise you don't get in despite being elected.

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 23, 2025 16:31 UTC (Sun) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

> The other way, and frankly the way I expect a legitimate board to be run, is to agree to disagree, but decide to support the majority decision anyway. At least on topics where there was prior public disagreement.

There's a difference between "agreeing to disagree" and touring all the talk-shows loudly exclaiming how you disagree with a decision that you are nonetheless bound to carry out, but are going to do your best to stonewall as much as possible. The latter is just not cool. You don't have to sing praises, but actively working against is bad.

And sure, no-one asks you to sign a document about that because you can't enforce it anyway. Who is going to enforce that an executive is acting in a consistent and predictable manner? In the end it's the legislature that can bring down the executive if they feel it's gotten out of hand (motion of no-confidence, in systems that have such a mechanism).

Parliament

Posted Mar 23, 2025 16:23 UTC (Sun) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (7 responses)

Yes, Cabinet solidarity is pretty conventional. I don't see why it makes sense for an entity like OSI though.

Parliament

Posted Mar 24, 2025 13:51 UTC (Mon) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (6 responses)

I had another thought.

Unlike many systems, and exactly like this OSI board, a British cabinet will consist of people who were elected. In some cases they'll have been elected on more or less the assumption that they'll be doing this exact job in the cabinet although the actual rules don't require that, it would be weird to win an election and then reward some previously unknown with a Great Office of State for example (e.g. Foreign Secretary, it was a scandal that a previous Tory admin had to appoint Lord Dave because that's effectively a slight to the Commons and arguably to the People who it represents not to select your Great Officers from among their ranks) even though that's technically legal.

Because they have democratic legitimacy - in a way that, for example Elon Musk does not - when they disagree they're not just speaking for themselves, they're speaking for great many more people, and so in this sense the solidarity argument breaks down. As a result it becomes not so much that they can't speak out as that it's clear *if* they speak out they can't keep that job in the executive. Which is something altogether different.

Parliament

Posted Mar 24, 2025 15:24 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (4 responses)

It's the convention the cabinet in the UK are also a member of the house of parliament or house of lords, and it's typical that they are elected MPs, however they don't have to be. It's not that unusual to have a minister from the House of Lords - typically an appointed life peer. However, they can be anyone.

In Ireland, the government consists of ministers who must all be members of the oireachtas, so all elected, either by the wider general electorate to the dail or the Seanad (the somewhat toothless upper house, which has a restricted electorate, university members, etc.).

Parliament

Posted Mar 24, 2025 16:42 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> It's the convention the cabinet in the UK are also a member of the house of parliament or house of lords, and it's typical that they are elected MPs, however they don't have to be. It's not that unusual to have a minister from the House of Lords - typically an appointed life peer. However, they can be anyone.

It's only in the last 100 years or so that it's become typical for the executive to be elected MPs. Before the great reform by George V (1910-1935), it was the House of Lords with much of the power and most of the executive. That was probably the end of the great shift of power that began with the Civil War and execution of Charles I.

Cheers,
Wol

Parliament

Posted Mar 25, 2025 0:18 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (2 responses)

That first part is not convention. Parliament requires that the King's ministers must be accountable to Parliament, it lacks a mechanism to oblige ordinary folk to attend and answer for their actions, so the ministers have to be in Parliament, the two choices available are that they could be Lords (in the upper chamber) or commoners (in the lower). In both cases it is within the power of the Parliament to compel them to come tell it what they have done and why.

Junior ministers are frequently "elevated" (made into a peer for life) specifically in order to make them a minister. If you want your old friend Jim Smith to be Minister for Video Games you announce that Jim gets a peerage, Lord Jim of Someplace, and make Lord Jim your Minister for Video Games, fine.

Of course because the Parliament is a sovereign entity it could arbitrarily change these rules, for example to create a tier of ministers who are compelled to attend but are not in parliament, and the previous administration did look at that option. Rule changes don't tend to stick, the Coalition decided to fix Parliamentary terms, that soon proved inconvenient and so the change was abolished again. But of course the rules we have now are an accumulation of rules which did stick, so anything (in this sense) is possible.

The convention is that Great Officers (those cabinet ministers who, under various names over the years, represent the core competencies of the executive, often given as the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary must be MPs, that's not a rule it's just that if they are not (as Lord Dave wasn't) the only place they can easily be obliged to answer for what they've done is the Lords, which is obviously a slight to the MPs and their constituents, ie basically everyone in the country. It makes sense for a government which held its own population - including many of its own party members - in contempt that they'd do so I suppose.

Parliament

Posted Mar 25, 2025 1:19 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> It makes sense for a government which held its own population - including many of its own party members - in contempt that they'd do so I suppose.

Are you a Brit? I can't remember. I certainly didn't feel it contemptuous especially given the light of history.

Nor did I find it contemptuous for that particular government. There's been plenty worse. And it's pretty much an inevitable consequence of our system of government. How come one election we get a government with a massive majority on a popular vote of 40%, and another government where the opposition was wiped out with 51% of the popular vote? It's the SYSTEM that doesn't respect the people. It's not a true representation of the wishes of the people. At all!

Mind you, a complete representation of what the people want would presumably be just as bad the other way. We've seen it elsewhere. It wasn't a debating chamber, it was a dead-locked arguing chamber with the Prime Minister's job being a rapidly revolving door ...

We've got the government history gave us. We've got the government we deserve. And quite frankly I don't find it contemptuous at all that the government would want an ex-Prime Minister's experience to help. The older I get, the more I feel that experience is valuable. And to call it contemptuous because people are ADULT enough to stand up and ask for help from someone with experience???

Cheers,
Wol

Parliament

Posted Mar 27, 2025 13:20 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

Yes, it's contempt. It says to me that from their point of view the hard work isn't necessary. Dave could be an MP if he wants, and if constituents will have him† he doesn't want, so he isn't an MP, well too bad. But they made him foreign secretary anyway, because they had no better candidates. Miserable, just accept that you can't govern the country with what's left of your party and make way for somebody who can.

† In practice you would parachute him into a safety Tory seat, my grandmother's old place would work, one of the safest seats in the whole country, A rotting corpse with the Conservative logo would handily win if it was allowed to stand. But that would be an imposition on poor Dave's time. Local party might even insist on meeting him. Tedious.

Parliament

Posted Mar 24, 2025 15:53 UTC (Mon) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

Another way is like in the Netherlands where members of cabinet cannot also be members of parliament. If you want to join the executive, you must vacate your seat in parliament. So you can't wear both hats at the same time. The cabinet can also include people that didn't appear on any ballot. Thus you get a strict separation between the executive and the legislature. Not even our prime minister has a vote in passing legislation (which also why legislation gets passed just fine even if it takes a few hundred days to form government, the executive is an optimisation, not a requirement).

Indirectly elected representatives (that is, people elected by elected representatives) are no less legitimate that directly elected ones, as long as the first layer of election is reasonably representative (i.e. any form of MMR).

The requirement to speak as one voice is because the cabinet consists of multiple parties hashing out a common position. If you don't like the common position, you're free to leave, or more likely, convince your party in the legislature to vote against it.

(This system was born out of the last set of culture wars, we'll see how it holds up this time.)

All of this is pretty far from the OSI board though.

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 23, 2025 19:58 UTC (Sun) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642) [Link] (1 responses)

kleptog said “Once you are part of the executive (the cabinet) then they speak as one voice. And that means supporting any decision in public”

In USA nonprofit orgs, the Executive/cabinet is the Executive Director and their staff. The Board of Directors is more akin to the legislature, and I know in parliamentary systems, in fact the legislature regularly engages with the Executive to hold them accountable. That said, the analogy is just poor — the governance models are just too different to really compare.

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 23, 2025 22:24 UTC (Sun) by rfontana (subscriber, #52677) [Link]

> That said, the analogy is just poor — the governance models are just too different to really compare.

This is somewhat similar to a point I was making on the OSI forum when people defended the "support publicly" clause as being similar to so-called "disagree and commit" philosophies that were in place at, reportedly, Sun Microsystems and Intel. If indeed some Silicon Valley tech companies adopted a "disagree and commit" policy regarding *employees*, that doesn't mean (a) it was a good idea, (b) it worked well, (c) it is appropriate to apply to nonprofit organizations, or (d) it is appropriately applied to *board* governance as opposed to management of employees.

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 24, 2025 12:33 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

> And that means supporting any decision in public, even if you disagree with it in private.

The way this game is played in politics in the UK and Ireland (which both have this "cabinet discussions are secret" rule - in Ireland enshrined in the constitution) is the politicians "leak" their position or materials favourable to their position, to favoured members of the press, directly or via aides; and/or leak stuff unfavourable to cabinet opponents).

The excellent (still to this day, indeed it's remarkable how well it has aged) "Yes, Minister" satirical series has plenty of examples of how this game is played. Absolute must watch. Lot of UK specific references in it of course, but the political games are no doubt universal.

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 24, 2025 15:42 UTC (Mon) by adobriyan (subscriber, #30858) [Link]

— The LWN is read by the people who program the country.

Sad I am glad I didn't pay OSI to vote

Posted Mar 21, 2025 22:48 UTC (Fri) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link] (1 responses)

I wanted to pay OSI to be able to vote, so I could show my support for the reform candidates. Because I liked their platform and thought it would be a good thing for OSI. In the end I decided not to because I was afraid they wouldn't accept their nomination and I wouldn't have a chance to vote for them.

Turns out it would have been even worse. They did indeed not accept one of the nominees on a IMHO bogus technicality, but at least did accepted the nomination of two others. Knowing full well that one point of their platform was "Remove “code of silence” from Board Member Agreement" and another was "Directors should be allowed to use FOSS for Board activities".

Then after the vote closed they added a requirement the candidates use a proprietary app to sign the Board Member Agreement (including those 5 words they had campaigned to change). And even though they did return the signed agreements (not using the proprietary app and with a note added about their campaign promise) they still refused to tally the votes these candidates got...

So even when people would have paid OSI to vote for (some of) them, they then didn't got to see how much support they had.

Maybe they wouldn't have won, or maybe the OSI board would have rejected their board appointment after the vote. But it would certainly have been interesting to see how much support their OSI reform platform would have gotten.

Sad I am glad I didn't pay OSI to vote

Posted Mar 24, 2025 12:12 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Exactly. Appearances matter in this area, and this frankly reeks of corruption. It doesn't matter that it might be mere incompetence, it *looks* like what a corrupt organization trying to ignore votes would do if it cared so little about appearances that it didn't even need to try to appear non-corrupt. (Of course, OSI is not actually in that position, which makes me suspect incompetence instead -- but honestly even the "votes are advisory" thing is an appalling clause that should be struck straight out. The presence of continuing directors is quite enough.)

Really horrible from OSI

Posted Mar 21, 2025 23:47 UTC (Fri) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418) [Link]

From the perspective of someone who helped write a board member agreement for FSF, and got good professional outside assistance, this is just as bad as it sounds: total nonsense. FSF does not require new board members to sign agreements before joining or have inflexible deadlines to disqualify candidates. I voted for Fontana.

Everything hinges on the real vote tally

Posted Mar 22, 2025 0:17 UTC (Sat) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (1 responses)

I think everything here is ultimately going to hinge on the real tally of votes, which OSI has not published because they excluded candidates.

If the candidates in question got a tiny fraction of the votes, small enough that all the other documented irregularities probably don't account for enough to have mattered, then nothing else really matters much here, and OSI members are not interested in the proposed reform platform. People will likely dismiss most of the rest of the irregularities and similar; they *shouldn't*, but they likely will.

If the candidates in question got enough votes that one or more of them would have *won*, on the other hand, then this is de facto an exclusion of candidates after the fact, and should be publicized as such. It doesn't matter if that was the intent, that was the *effect*.

Everything hinges on the real vote tally

Posted Mar 24, 2025 9:49 UTC (Mon) by danpb (subscriber, #4831) [Link]

> If the candidates in question got a tiny fraction of the votes, small enough that all the other documented irregularities probably don't account for enough to have mattered, then nothing else really matters much here, and OSI members are not interested in the proposed reform platform. People will likely dismiss most of the rest of the irregularities and similar; they *shouldn't*, but they likely will.

If the candidates only got a tiny fraction of the votes, thus loosing anyway, then it is puzzling why the extra post-election changes were imposed at that precise time where internally the results would already be known ? That would be creating drama where none would be needed, if the candidates had clearly lost anyway. There would be no better repudiation of the candidate's platform than seeing it rejected by voters. If the changes would have had no impact on the current election results, the changes could have been put in place for the next election and avoided creating such a strong negative view from the outside.

On signing an agreement before results are tallied

Posted Mar 22, 2025 0:19 UTC (Sat) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

To observe an analogous situation: I would not, for instance, expect a company to have an employee sign an unconditional non-compete agreement *before* receiving a binding job offer. It's reasonable for the employee to say "I'll sign the agreement once you offer me the job, the offer can be conditional on signing the agreement, but I'm not signing something that I'll continue to be bound to even if you don't give me a job
offer".

So the OSI continues to grow irrelevant...

Posted Mar 22, 2025 6:34 UTC (Sat) by gwolf (subscriber, #14632) [Link] (2 responses)

I followed the process before it unfolded, as I was one of few volunteers to be nominated for the Debian affiliate seat when our DPL announced Debian could run a candidate for an affiliate seat. I did want to run this election, and I did have some clear arguments — but when I saw who the other DDs volunteering were, Luke and Bradley among them, I decided to step back as I am sure they would be (they would have been, sadly) better representatives for our project than myself.

Anyway... Yes, the OSI has repeatedly met with resistance from us, the free software developers and believers, those of us that have embraced the “Open Source” moniker because it is better understood “out there”. Sadly, stupidly badly run elections such as what we witnessed, as we say in Spanish, are but “just one more stripe to the tiger” for an organization that has left its community behind and plainly does not care about legitimacy.

So the OSI continues to grow irrelevant...

Posted Mar 23, 2025 19:12 UTC (Sun) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

The words you are looking for are 'regulatory capture'.

So the OSI continues to grow irrelevant...

Posted Mar 30, 2025 23:45 UTC (Sun) by gmestanley (guest, #176765) [Link]

To be fair, the term "libre software" would've been just as understandable for most people. I say this as one of the younger people for whom "open-source" was everywhere, even if I didn't understand it at the time.

One other thing

Posted Mar 22, 2025 6:48 UTC (Sat) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (1 responses)

Another item on the Agreement is

> Communication with staff and volunteers goes through the Executive Director or with their active consent.

Ah. So if a volunteer has a grievance (legitimate or not) with the ED, and they want to reach out to a board member (presumably the one most likely to be qualified to handle the problem) that board member must ASK the ED to be allowed to hear them?

I do see the point of this item, can't have board members run circles around the ED, but ...

One other thing

Posted Mar 24, 2025 1:48 UTC (Mon) by buck (subscriber, #55985) [Link]

Ah, yes, the "Unitary Executive"

We've had some controversy about that where I come from lately.

Standard practice, my ballot

Posted Mar 22, 2025 11:06 UTC (Sat) by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590) [Link] (2 responses)

In my experience, "standard practice" is nearly always a weasily word for "I wish it be this way".

Standard practice, my ballot

Posted Mar 30, 2025 23:46 UTC (Sun) by gmestanley (guest, #176765) [Link] (1 responses)

In my experience too. It's not great.

Standard practice, my ballot

Posted Mar 31, 2025 8:58 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Ten thousand lemmings can't be wrong ...

(although in real life lemmings don't usually charge over cliffs.)

Cheers,
Wol

Members of board taking part in the debate

Posted Mar 22, 2025 12:04 UTC (Sat) by gray_-_wolf (subscriber, #131074) [Link] (3 responses)

In multiple places in the article people who are members of the board were quoted, stating that they support the "code of silence". I find that interesting. Given the code is currently in place, can they actual take part in honest debate about it? I assume it was put in place by the board, right? So, can they actually do anything else than to support it publicly, regardless of what they actually think?

Members of board taking part in the debate

Posted Mar 24, 2025 1:55 UTC (Mon) by buck (subscriber, #55985) [Link]

> can they actually do anything else than to support it publicly, regardless of what they actually think?

Catch-22

Members of board taking part in the debate

Posted Mar 24, 2025 2:18 UTC (Mon) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (1 responses)

"So, can they actually do anything else than to support it publicly, regardless of what they actually think?"

They can stay quiet. I don't interpret the agreement as going so far that members are compelled to say things publicly about any specific decision, or about anything at all.

Members of board taking part in the debate

Posted Mar 24, 2025 7:44 UTC (Mon) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642) [Link]

jzb wrote:
> They [existing Directors] can stay quiet. I don't interpret the agreement as going so far that members are compelled to say things publicly about any specific decision, or about anything at all.

I agree that no Director, under the existing 19 words, *must* speak positively. You're right they can just stay completely silent. That's why it's a form of a gag order. The staying quiet even outlives Board service, because duty of loyalty to an org has residual requirements.

These 19 words are now being used to manufacture consent and create chilling effect on FOSS discourse by some of its key leaders. We are pretty sure that wasn't the intent of these words, but they're being used that way now by current leadership. Fontana and I are saying the emperor has no clothes here, and the emperor doesn't like it. (Ever notice in that fable that we don't hear what happens the next day to the kid who shouted it?)

stupid breeds stupid

Posted Mar 22, 2025 13:55 UTC (Sat) by vhns (guest, #138460) [Link] (11 responses)

We've long enough heard form people such as Stallman and the FSF that "OpenSource" was just a thinly-veiled corporate project to thwart free software and users' freedoms, so the fact that these elections were sketchy and perhaps even rigged does not impress me one bit.

stupid breeds stupid

Posted Mar 23, 2025 2:20 UTC (Sun) by mirabilos (subscriber, #84359) [Link]

As someone strongly in the Open Source community, I must refute this.

It is OSI which has self-destructed with OSAID, including basically every process around it, and now is merely a laughingstock that we cannot respect, let alone take for real any more.

As such, Open Source is now without a recognised organisation, but we still have the OSD and the DFSG.

stupid breeds stupid

Posted Mar 23, 2025 7:29 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (9 responses)

> We've long enough heard form people such as Stallman and the FSF that "OpenSource" was just a thinly-veiled corporate project to thwart free software and users' freedoms, so the fact that these elections were sketchy and perhaps even rigged does not impress me one bit.

Sounds like you weren't there. "History is written by the victors". Sounds like you prefer to believe the history books over the people who were there and lived through it.

RMS has always been a fanatic. Don't get me wrong - we need people like him to counter people who are charging in the other direction as fast as they can, but Open Source has always been "People *should* share because it's in their best interests to do so".

Free Software is "People *must give away* because it's in *my* interest for them to do so".

And all this conspiracy theory stuff completely ignores the fact that the trigger had absolutely nothing to do with software per se, and everything to do with copyright - when the US fell in line with the rest of the world and recognised software as a literary work eligible for copyright protection.

Now they're trying to create a special branch of mathematics called software that is eligible for both copyright AND patent :-( I think that's pretty dead but the legacy is still there, and still destructive :-(

Cheers,
Wol

stupid breeds stupid

Posted Mar 23, 2025 12:54 UTC (Sun) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Wol writes: Free Software is "People *must give away* because it's in *my* interest for them to do so".

I disagree. Free software is "People *must give away* because it's in *everyone's* interest for them to do so."

stupid breeds stupid

Posted Mar 23, 2025 17:01 UTC (Sun) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (7 responses)

Free Software is "People *must give away* because it's in *my* interest for them to do so".

I don't think this is a charitable summary of the Free Software ethos. If I was going to try to boil it down to a one-liner, I'd summarize it something like this: the Free Software movement holds the belief that it's unethical to deny people the right to run, study, and modify the software that is distributed to them or to deny them the ability to distribute the changes. It is not only about self-interest, IMO.

That probably comes across to many people as extreme because they don't even have an ethical framework that encompasses software at all. Especially those folks who don't have the ability to modify the software—why do I care if I have these rights if I cannot (practically) exercise them?

stupid breeds stupid

Posted Mar 23, 2025 20:38 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (6 responses)

> That probably comes across to many people as extreme because they don't even have an ethical framework that encompasses software at all.

Unfortunately, to my mind, this *is* extreme and is where idealism and reality meet in a train wreck. Okay, there's no such thing as an absolute ethical framework, but I would have thought mine - which basically thinks copyright for literary works (including programs) is fine to enable the author(s) to earn an income - is pretty much the norm. This attitude completely destroys peoples' ability to write software as a product for sale.

Applied to books, it would destroy authors' abilities to earn a living as a writer. The same with musicians and composing. (Look at the famous classical (1700s, 1800s) composers. They were all employees or performers first, composers very much second.)

I don't think it's ethical to treat software as special ... that said, software is treated specialy because you can read books (because they come as source), you can read music (because the source is almost always freely available), you mostly can't read source code because it isn't available :-( (Hence me wanting source to be available as a matter of course as a minimum... even if locked up by copyright).

Hence me being very much an Open Source guy - share because it's in your own best interest (and if I use your source, there is an ethical obligation to pay back/forward as appropriate). But I can't agree with dskoll that forced sharing benefits everyone - all those software house employees are going to lose their jobs ...

Free and Open Source software is great for those people for whom software isn't the product. Maybe we should go back to the 1700s and earlier - when musicians were performers and teachers and just happened to write their own music. Shakespeare wasn't a playwright - he was an impressario who wrote his own plays. There wasn't really any such thing as a novelist - they were were presumably journalists and columnists. Dunno how it would play out for software - maybe it would be better (or maybe not). It would certainly be very different.

But personally, I don't think Free Software is ethically justifiable unless we get rid of copyright completely. Don't take that the wrong way - I do think it's morally superior!

> That probably comes across to many people as extreme because they don't even have an ethical framework that encompasses software at all. Especially those folks who don't have the ability to modify the software—why do I care if I have these rights if I cannot (practically) exercise them?

You're nicking my hobby horse :-) And coming to the complete opposite conclusion to me. Folk who can't write their own software won't have software written for them, because it doesn't scratch any programmer itches. And as private individuals they can't afford to pay for it. Even as businesses, they probably can't afford to pay for it if their competitors can just copy it. So again, Free Software is not in everybody's best interests there, either.

The reason I said "Free Software is you must share because it's in my interest" is because in practice "my" really means "us programmers" - at the end of the day isn't it extremely arrogant for us to assume what benefits us must benefit others as well? I absolutely hate it when I'm the victim of that attitude.

Cheers,
Wol

stupid breeds stupid

Posted Mar 23, 2025 20:51 UTC (Sun) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (5 responses)

Wol writes: But I can't agree with dskoll that forced sharing benefits everyone

Well, hang on. Nobody is forcing anyone to use the GPL for their code. The FSF says they should, but they have no real power over software authors. What is true is that if an author picks the GPL, then downstream recipients are forced to share their changes if they distribute modified versions of the software, and that IMO is a good thing that does benefit everyone.

If you want to make money writing software, pick a standard proprietary license. There's no shame in that, and it's a much easier way to build a business than with free software or open-source. But if you do decide to make software open-source, then I think a copyleft license is best. Open-source (or Free Software) is a philosophy. It's not a business model.

stupid breeds stupid

Posted Mar 23, 2025 23:03 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

This is where imho the "pick any two" dilemma rears its head.

> then downstream recipients are forced to share their changes if they distribute modified versions of the software, and that IMO is a good thing that does benefit everyone.

> If you want to make money writing software, pick a standard proprietary license.

I don't think those two statements are mutually compatible :-) Well, they are with copyleft licences like MPL, but that's a "weak" licence and not liked by the purists.

If I want to make a living from software, using the GPL makes life, well, tricky. How can that be "a good thing that does benefit everyone"? Either I have to re-invent the wheel (a bad thing), or I have major administrative hassle proving I comply with the licence (a bad thing), or I have to think of all sorts of "inventive" ways round the GPL - yet another bad thing!

That's alleviated to some extent by the LGPL, which is a big show of practicality by FSF, but it comes over as an unwanted concession to necessity, rather than the right solution to certain problems.

But we're drifting way off what provoked this thread - a conspiracy theory against Open Source. We both want the same end - for the source to be open. We both agree that if someone makes us a gift, it behoves us to return it. It's just we may not agree about the best way to achieve that end. That's life!

Cheers,
Wol

stupid breeds stupid

Posted Mar 23, 2025 23:44 UTC (Sun) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

The statements are not mutually compatible. The reason for creating GPL'd software is not financial. It is to benefit humanity. If you want to make a living from software, don't use GPL'd software (unless you're willing to jump through the hoops.) If you want to produce GPL'd software, then it's fine for you to use GPL'd software.

The intent behind the GPL was never to empower businesses to make a profit off GPL'd software. The fact that a few have figured out a way to do that is not relevant to the intent of the GPL, which is to empower users to control their own computing environment.

stupid breeds stupid

Posted Mar 25, 2025 0:13 UTC (Tue) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (1 responses)

The difference between "should" and "must" is an army and a navy, not any ethical or normative considerations. If "must" does not correctly capture the intended normative meaning, then neither does "should."

stupid breeds stupid

Posted Mar 25, 2025 0:15 UTC (Tue) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

(Yes, I have read RFC 2119. Those are technical definitions for use in standards. I'm speaking of the standard definitions as you would find them in the dictionary.)

stupid breeds stupid

Posted Mar 31, 2025 18:19 UTC (Mon) by sramkrishna (subscriber, #72628) [Link]

"If you want to make money writing software, pick a standard proprietary license. There's no shame in that, and it's a much easier way to build a business than with free software or open-source. But if you do decide to make software open-source, then I think a copyleft license is best. Open-source (or Free Software) is a philosophy. It's not a business model."

I think many companies do think it is a business model. They are looking to get free labor from the community. History points to many anecdotes of community made software or efforts co-opted by a company. Usually ends badly though. Copyleft is the one way to not have your work co-opted by an entity looking to leverage free expertise and labor. It does put a damper on making money off your own work. Hopefully, though with efforts like flathub we can have both.

Disagreement of board members made public

Posted Mar 25, 2025 1:28 UTC (Tue) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] (1 responses)

Smith defended the requirement and said that disagree and commit is a "pretty common standard in the corporate world"

Disagree that a signed commitment is common. Having been made sit through a week of training by the Australian Institute of Company Directors, Directors should not conceed to terms which impede the legislated Duties of Directors. Directors have a individual responsibility to meet their Duties which is not voided by collegiate decisions made by the Board. There are clearly scenarios where a Director's Duty may require a public statement at odds with prior public statements of the Board.

Public statements by Directors already need to meet the Duty to "act in good faith in the best interests of the company and for a proper purpose."

Disagreement of board members made public

Posted Mar 25, 2025 13:08 UTC (Tue) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

Disagree that a signed commitment is common.

I don't think he was saying a signed commitment is common for corporate boards, etc. Having worked for more than one company that embraced the idea, what I took him to mean is that "disagree and commit" is a standard practice for decisions made at companies. e.g., if the company decides it's going to phase out Product A in favor of Product B, the people who championed "A" need to commit to the decision after it's made.

FWIW, that's a reasonable practice generally—it can be harmful if a company has individuals or leaders who continue to argue against doing something that's been decided. It can also be reasonable in communities, where you might have one or more holdouts after a community has decided to do (or not do) something and somebody keeps arguing the point or trying to slow or block work.

But treating it as a gag order that prevents people from even giving their opinion if it dissents from the final decision. I'm not sure that is the best approach for an organization like OSI.

Timezone for deadlines

Posted Mar 27, 2025 11:32 UTC (Thu) by jnareb (subscriber, #46500) [Link] (3 responses)

> Faraone said that it seemed arbitrary and capricious to govern elections by UTC when the organization is based in California. They urged OSI to reconsider the policy and allow them to stand for election, but the organization declined to do so.

I can understand using the local timezone of place of incorporation, but in my opinion when giving deadlines it is best to provide them in *Anywhere on Earth* (AoE) timezone.

Timezone for deadlines

Posted Mar 27, 2025 11:51 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Any timezone with a fixed UTC offset would work - AoE as UTC-12 is fine, but UTC+12 would also be fine, as would something weird like UTC-15:30.

Key is to avoid things that are under political control - daylight savings, timezone as used in a specific location etc. You really don't want to be in a position where a government body can unintentionally (or intentionally) throw off your timetable by changing the laws that apply to a location, and you don't want confusion because someone "knows" that their timezone is normally (say) 9 hours difference to San Francisco, when it's currently 8 hours difference (which is true for anyone in France right now, for example).

Timezone for deadlines

Posted Mar 27, 2025 12:02 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

If you have an international audience - use a timezone! Don't care which. Just specify it as UTC+-, not something stupid like BST which has an official meaning, and a dominant meaning, about 6 hours apart!

Especially for countries that span multiple timezones, I would have assumed stating the zone would come naturally.

Cheers,
Wol

Timezone for deadlines

Posted Mar 29, 2025 7:47 UTC (Sat) by anton (subscriber, #25547) [Link]

Anywhere on Earth has become the standard for Calls for Papers, for a good reason: You don't want anybody to miss the deadline on a technicality. Of course, if you actually want all but your preferred candidates to miss the deadline on a technicality, you set an earlier deadline and only communicate it to the preferred candidates.

fyi, fhere is a petition referencing this article

Posted Apr 19, 2025 17:27 UTC (Sat) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418) [Link]

https://codeberg.org/OSI-Concerns/election-results-2025