Bonum Certa Men Certa

Open Source Initiative (OSI): A Boat Without a Captain

Hong Phuc Dang announces victory on LinkedIn

Summary: A leaderless Open Source Initiative (OSI) isn't functioning anymore; it can barely even conduct a process by which to decide who its leaders will be

THE two founders of the OSI stepped aside last year. Simon Phipps is almost no longer involved either, right? The General Manager of the OSI (their sole full-time member of staff)? He left abruptly months ago. So who actually runs the OSI? Why is the majority of its budget (half or more than half of it) funneled to help Microsoft monopolise "Open Source"? Why would any individual people ("members" or "supporters") give them a portion of their salaries? It's not even clear who runs the OSI anymore...



"Why would any individual people ("members" or "supporters") give them a portion of their salaries? It's not even clear who runs the OSI anymore..."The OSI itself would probably not hesitate to admit a state of disarray. As we noted (briefly, in passing) last night, the OSI had suffered a compromised election, maybe even a security breach (hard to tell; no real transparency).

Hong Phuc Dang, shown above, thought she had won, but dang! Not so fast...

"OSI election vulnerability in process," one reader told us, led to the OSI "asking users to "vote again" March 23 - April 2 - after... Hong Phuc Dang announces victory on LinkedIn." (Microsoft)

"Apparently," the reader told us, "there was a "vulnerability" in the election process as announced by Deb Nicholson. Looks like the edit was made on the 19th... [i.e.] 3 days after... election closed."

"So what is this vague vulnerability," our reader asked aloud, "can we get details?"

Here's where to look. Our reader told us she had checked this and the original election was "running from March 5 through March 16."

"Hong Phuc Dang, shown above, thought she had won, but dang! Not so fast..."This can be confirmed in the official sources/site.

"On March 18, Hong Phuc Dang announced she won..." (image above)

"Today, I saw this: "Because of a vulnerability in our voting process, we are re-running our 2021 Board Election. We sincerely hope you will take a minute to vote again.

New election starts: March 23rd, 2021 at 9:00 a.m. PDT New election closes: April 2nd, 2021 at 11:00 a.m. PDT"

"Perens mentioned something about a system problem in one of his mailing list posts just before he jumped ship," our reader recalled. "I wonder if this is what he was referring to. At any rate, these pebbles leftover after the implosion and demise are not even holding on well. How do you botch up yearly voting? That takes some effort!"

"Either way, the OSI is in a bad and sad state. Its most major demise/collapse happened last year.""Also," she added, as a side note, "what's with the %20s in the first wiki link... that seems like something from back when people used spaces, right?"

She was referring to URLs with "OSI%20Board%20of%20Directors", "Board%20Member%20Elections" and "2021%20Individual%20"... or "%20Affiliate%20Elections" (maybe they don't know how to use the wiki software properly; maybe they even use Windows).

Either way, the OSI is in a bad and sad state. Its most major demise/collapse happened last year. Some of its leadership is nowadays openwashing professionals, not Free software (or Open Source) champions and some are using operating systems that are proprietary, which says where they stand on the real (core) issues.

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