administrator's blog

The time is once more upon us to elect board members for the Open Source Initiative. This organisation is led by its members, and as such your participation both as a voter, or as a candidate, is essential to our continued success in protecting and promoting open source software, development and communities, and championing software freedom in society through education, collaboration, and infrastructure. If you are not already a member, consider changing that now so you can participate in our upcoming elections!

University continues commitment to open source software and communities through OSI Membership.

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Jan. 24, 2016 -- The Open Source Initiative® (OSI) announced today the Affiliate Membership of Indiana University (IU), a long time champion for the use of open source software as a means for greater efficiency in higher education. The partnership highlights the OSI's recent efforts to extend support to higher education: helping colleges and universities across the globe realize the benefits of open source software, develpoment models and communities.

Shared mission of raising awareness and adoption through community building extends international development, collaboration and advocacy for open source software.

The OSI Board is very sad to note the death of Ian Murdock. As well as founding the Debian GNU/Linux distribution in 1993 (Debian obituary), Ian was a co-founder of the Open Source Initiative and was the original Board Secretary named in our Articles of Incorporation.

Funding platform for freely-licensed works highlights diversity in scope across Affiliate Membership.

While some may assert that open source is not applicable in every circumstance, the right to demand access to source code in situations where it is appropriate is important to society as a whole.

Sometime last year, after the 10th Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon; I blogged about OSCON lessons for Africa. I had expressed my hope that the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa - FOSSFA would be given needed support to make an appearance and also have its say.

It happened this year.

Launched on the eve of his birthday, the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) and the Advanced Information Technology Institute of the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Center for Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE), have decided to join forces with the Sohne family to establish a Fellowship in memory and honour of the great work that Guido accomplished. So I was not worried to make the 15-hour road trip to get to Accra to be part of the event.

- Are you interested in building a successful business in Free/Open Source Software (FOSS), and in helping others to do the same?

- Do you have a solid background in business and FOSS?

- Do you have experience in training others, and/or are you part of a training institution?

Then respond by MAY 30 to become part of an exciting training programme on building businesses with Free/Open Source Software. The call for participants in the Training of Trainers is now open at the project site