Thoughts on Leaving the OSI Board
After six years (two terms), this week marks the end of my time on the Board of Directors of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). While I plan to remain involved with open source issues and with the Board, the end of my service on the Board is a significant personal milestone, so I thought that I would briefly reflect on the past six years for open source, and especially the OSI.
When I was nominated for the OSI Board in 2010, the Board was a small, select group whose early members made important contributions to the open source community, notably the Open Source Definition and the approval of licenses that conformed to that Definition. The Board’s activities were supported by a couple of corporate donations. Since all of the Board members had “day jobs” that brought in their personal incomes, everyone was quite busy and it was often difficult to make progress on various initiatives. It’s a testament to the hard work of the earliest members of the Board that the OSI was well-recognized as the steward of licenses and the OSD.
The US Federal Government is one of the world's largest buyers of software, much of which is custom developed by government contractors in response to RfP's and sole source procurements. Not only is the original development of this software expensive, but the Government must often negotiate follow-on sole source contracts with the same vendor for support and enhancement. Beyond that, many of these contractors are incapable of building complex systems.