What Happened to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Elections: Proprietary Software Companies in Control, the Scandals Cannot be Hidden Anymore
OSI perceived to be or generally seen as somewhat of a joke in the eyes of more observers, including insiders
IN the last part we looked at privacy scandals at the OSI. There is a lot more to be said about that. We'll talk about it later this month and next month.
The OSI seems very eager to distract from all these scandals (see this previous part and the one from four days ago, set aside the previous chapter), but let's consider what just happened when OSI announced "the new directors of OSI board" with SAS in the Board [1, 2] (openwashing).
It's just as bad as we predicted. People on the right mocked the Open Source Initiative "Principles", saying that: "The UN "Open By Default" policy can only be signed... with Closed Source Microsoft Office 365."
That's typical OSI.
The OSI said it "confirmed Carlo Piana as director and welcomed Ruth Suele, recommended by Affiliates, and McCoy Smith recommended by Individual supporters, as new directors."
But it didn't go down well. LWN has just published (behind paywall) an article entitled "OSI election ends with unsatisfying results". To quote: "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."
We wrote about this before. It's actually a lot worse, as we're going to show soon because we're only about halfway through. Judging by what remains to be said, maybe we have enough new material 'in the tank' for 10 more parts, so our original plan to wrap up this series by the end of March is shelved; we'll continue right into April. █