Thierry Carrez

he/him Vice Chair
Candidacy Period: August 23, 2021 – March 31, 2027 Type of Seat:

With a direct interest in the intersection between technical and social
aspects, Thierry has been facilitating collaboration and open innovation
using open source for the last 20 years. He was directly involved in a
number of open source projects, starting with Gentoo Linux where he
headed the security team and was a board member, continuing at Canonical
as the technical lead for Ubuntu Server, then working on OpenStack as
its release manager and elected Technical Committee chair.

He is now the General Manager at the Open Infrastructure Foundation, a
non-profit organization fostering open development of open source
infrastructure solutions.

How the candidate will contribute to the board

If reelected, I intend to continue the stewardship work I’ve been doing in the last 3 years as an officer on the OSI board, first as Secretary and then as Vice-Chair.

After serving a first term on the board, I can also help provide historical perspective as OSI finalizes its transition to a staff-driven organization.

I’ll continue to be directly engaged in the shaping of the messaging of the organization. In particular, I intend to continue advocating for the value of the permissionless innovation that open source licenses has unleashed, and defend it against proprietary relicensing.

Why the candidate should be elected

I bring first-hand experience in non-profit management, combined with an interest in the mechanics of open innovation, over a strong technical background that helps me understand the latest trends.

This allows me to effectively represent on the board the interests of open source maintainers and contributors, in addition to the perspective of OSI affiliate organizations.

The open source community is facing many significant challenges today. More than ever, we need to join forces and push common messaging, and I see the OSI affiliates as the right group to further organize our defense.