Open Source Initiative (OSI), Wikipedia, Molly De Blanc, and Censorship/Reputation Laundering
OSI - Wikipedia and Molly De Blanc in focus
"Hi Roy," one reader said, "I see the editor aka the OSI CFO/Wikipedia editor."
"In the course of researching the Wikipedia page for Open Source Initiative [OSI, which censors Wikipedia pages], I saw Tracy Hinds was plugging away at censoring the content."
And "now," she added. "I already knew this and didn't see anything new. As in, you won't see anything new in the censoring of information. Wikimedia/Wikipedia has had some past history with bad players themselves! The editors."
"This "editor" for the Wikipedia page for OSI is Tracy Hinds, the CFO - according to the 2023 990 (image attached below). She goes by Hackygolucky on Mastodon, and Wikipedia - as well as other social media, I'm sure."
"At any rate, I noted some edits by non other than Molly De Blanc. The one who had her profile as the one who initiated the cancellation of RMS. The community manager at FSF and former intern. I thought we had seen the last of Molly. Molly... the gift that keeps on giving."
We can clearly see "Mollydb" in, e.g.:
curprev 15:01, 16 July 2024 Mollydb talk contribs 25,790 bytes +8 →Board members: Been adding Board alumni who were deleted in a previous update to the current board list (see diffid: 1165980544) undo
curprev 14:59, 16 July 2024 Mollydb talk contribs 25,782 bytes +20 →Board members undo
curprev 01:59, 16 July 2024 Mollydb talk contribs 25,762 bytes +224 →Board members undo
As the reader put it: "So Molly made edits to the OSI as recently as July 2024. [...] I don't know how our history was eliminated from this page. [...] reminded me of the Nupedia days before the open source well was so poisoned."
Techrights has been long been trying to find misinformation about OSI. It's an easy task. There's so much spam and promotional nonsense out there.
Quoting the reader: "Well, thought I'd mention it.. and let's see how they censor facts on the wiki page... I fully expect it."
Quoting the page with remarks:
The Open Source Definition is a derivative document based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG), released in 1997 by Bruce Perens. As Debian Project Leader, Perens released the scribed DFSG on July 4, 1997. In an announce post, Perens states he hopes other distributions use the DFSG as a model and states "We hope that other software projects, including other Linux distributions, will use this document as a model. We will gladly grant permission for any such use." "Debian's "Social Contract" with the Free Software Community" (Mailing list). 2025-04-24.Any organization can use the Debian Free Software guidelines by citing the Social Contract. No open source definition required.
Perens modified the Debian Free Software Guidelines into the Open Source Definition by removing Debian references and replacing these with "Open Source". The original announcement of The Open Source Definition happened on February 9, 1998, on Slashdot[7] and elsewhere; the definition was given in Linux Gazette on February 10, 1998.[8]
Perens and Raymond established the Open Source Initiative, an organization intended to promote open source software. Neither Perens nor Raymond are involved in the OSI currently.
The Open Source Definition seems to be a widely accepted standard for open-source software, although open source developers choosing to use GPL, BSD, MIT, Apache licenses for projects do not require any such standard. Additionally, the DFSG could be forked and other derivatives created based on the intent of the original release of the document the Open Source Definition is based upon.
After so much muddying (the water/s) we're meant to think Microsoft GitHub, which is basically failing, is "open" even when the opposite is true, and OSI, which lobbies for GitHub, "speaks" for Open Source.
OSI is like SPLC. The old name remains, the mission changed. █