Bonum Certa Men Certa

Dialogue With the OSI

Video download link | md5sum dd82add8419c77a6dbe0e85e7bf3070a



Summary: Over the past (almost) week I've spoken to the people in charge of the OSI, hoping to constructively engage with them so as to make them understand the concerns and maybe respond accordingly

THE VIDEO above would come across more empathetically than text, so a lot of what I have to say is already covered in it. But a textual/verbal (non-oral) summary would help nonetheless, knowing that videos take a longer time to digest.



I explained to the people who spearhead the OSI (publicly and behind the scenes) that according to the IRS (latest publicly-available form) ~96% of the money the OSI gets is in fact coming from corporations.

"I explained to the people who spearhead the OSI (publicly and behind the scenes) that according to the IRS (latest publicly-available form) ~96% of the money the OSI gets is in fact coming from corporations.""That's something we want to change," I was told, "adding more funding sources, including individuals and grants from different sorts of institutions. It will not happen overnight though, it'll take time."

Fair enough. So the ambition is there.

"We'll start new projects and programs soon," the message said, and "I hope we'll get judged over more concrete actions than just a blog post."

"It does seem like these folks are willing to at least listen."I was told they would look into "reasons why you consider GitHub the #1 threat instead of others like the efforts to destroy the Open Source Definition by shared source companies or patent-asserting behemoths openly hostile to the OSD."

There was no denial about the strange arrangement with Microsoft; with a bit of diplomacy hopefully the OSI's leadership (Phipps et al still play a considerable role) will reconsider this current trajectory.

We're going to focus on other topics now (more urgent issues and pressing matters like software patents) and I will correspond with the OSI. It does seem like these folks are willing to at least listen.

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