Feature freeze: a pause with purpose

Members Newsletter – August 2025

Dear Open Source Initiative supporters,

As the days stretch long and the lure of beaches and barbecues calls, I’ve got a summer-themed hot take for our community:

Our collective obsession with “perpetual bug fixing” and “ever-expanding features” is the digital equivalent of trying to pack five different beach activities into a single, sweltering afternoon. It’s unsustainable, exhausting, and often leads to burnout – not just for maintainers, but for the projects themselves.

This summer, let’s challenge ourselves to embrace a radical concept: strategic project stasis for the sake of long-term health. Imagine a summer vacation for your codebase. Not abandonment, but a deliberate period of low maintenance and a reduction in scope, rather than a constant push for “more.”

Are we so afraid of a project being “finished enough” that we sacrifice its stability and our own well-being on the altar of endless iterations? This summer, let’s advocate for the beauty of a well-maintained, stable codebase, even if it means fewer shiny new features for a while. Sometimes, the most refreshing thing we can do for Open Source is to let it simply be, and perhaps even enjoy the quiet hum of a project that just… works.

Wishing you a truly restful and recharging summer!

Stefano Maffulli

Executive Director, OSI 

I hold weekly office hours on Fridays with OSI members: book time if you want to chat about OSI’s activities, if you want to volunteer or have suggestions.

News from the OSI

White House releases AI Action Plan, includes Open Source

The OSI explains the areas of the “AI Action Plan” that may impact the Open Source community, in particular a specific section titled: “Encourage Open Source and Open Weight-AI,” and highlights recommendations to watch as the administration moves forward with implementation.

Case study: enhancing SBOMs with cdsbom at the Linux Foundation

A Linux Foundation case study on using cdsbom to enhance SPDX SBOMs with license data from ClearlyDefined for better compliance and transparency.

OSI in the news

Open Source Is Too Important To Dilute

Article from The New Stack

The Open Source Initiative (OSI), a nonprofit that sets the foundation for the open source software ecosystem, did the hard work to define open source decades ago. It identified 10 criteria that include free redistribution, integrity of the author’s source code and no discrimination against persons and groups, among others. These criteria are the guarantees that allow companies to use OSS without calling their legal department every time a developer installs a package.

Other highlights

Other news

News from OSI affiliates and partners

Survey

DPGA Global Open Source Policies & Practices Survey

The OSI and the DPGA, in coordination with 24 partners, has launched the Global Open-Source Policies & Practices Survey to map the current use of open-source-first approaches across governments and public-interest institutions.

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