Open Source Initiative defends disallowing board candidate after timezone SNAFU

The Open Source Initiative's (OSI) 2025 Board of Directors election is again mired in controversy.

In 2021, OSI, the public benefits corporation that oversees the Open Source Definition from which numerous open source software licenses descend, confronted voting irregularities and had to redo its election.

This year, OSI refused to accept the candidacy of Debian developer Luke Faraone after his application arrived after an inconsistently communicated deadline.

Faraone in a blog post said the application was sent about 2100 Pacific Time on Monday, February 17. According to the OSI, the deadline was 2359 UTC, or 1559 PT.

"The OSI's contact address is in California, so it seems arbitrary and capricious to retroactively define all of these processes as being governed by UTC," observed Faraone, who urged the OSI to reconsider.

The OSI’s ruling prompted some criticism on social media amid claims that the deadline had not been clearly specified as UTC.

Tracy Hinds, chair of OSI, acknowledged that the org’s public-facing website did not mention the relevant time zone, but told The Register: "Everyone who is qualified to run for elections (full members of OSI) received multiple emails with the time zone, sent with read receipts.”

In a separate LinkedIn post Hinds wrote that revisiting the matter would be unfair to the candidates who had submitted their applications on time.

She told us she is satisfied voters will enjoy the chance to vote for candidates with varying opinions, but promised to do better in future.

"We appreciate the opportunity to improve our processes, and we’re looking forward to the next steps in the election for our community."

AI policy drama

The election row is taking place amid community dissent over the organization's Open Source Artificial Intelligence Definition (OSAID) that debuted last October.

Bruce Perens, who wrote the original Open Source Definition and parted ways with OSI in 2020, denounced the idea of the OSAID last year. He believes AI is incompatible with the open software movement because “its output is inherently plagiarism.”

"The Open Source AI Definition requires less of AI than the original Open Source Definition requires of any other form of software," said Perens, pointing to a rebuttal he penned on the subject titled: "My contention is that it isn't Open Source and is Openwashing."

Perens added, "It is an unfortunate fact that OSI has a board member from the Linux Foundation, and I guess others who are also sympathetic with an increasing corporate involvement in OSI. This, of course, threatens their integrity as custodians of the Open Source Definition, but the OSAID already shows that they aren't doing a good job at that."

He also told The Register he feels OSI pulled candidate registration deadlines out of thin air to exclude a candidate whose views may not align with the org’s current thinking.

More than legalese

While it may seem that defining open source software and open source AI is an esoteric matter, the OSI's blessing influences the terms under which software is licensed and the willingness of the open source community to participate in related projects.

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Bradley Kuhn, policy fellow and hacker-in-residence at the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), another open source advocacy organization, is running for OSI board seat on a reform platform. He's doing so alongside Red Hat lawyer Richard Fontana, who is running as a member candidate. Their platform calls for the repeal the OSAID and to make several other changes.

"[T]he OSI's push to adopt its Open Source AI Definition (OSAID) has been a mistake," their joint shared platform statement states. "The OSI acted too quickly to impose an overly ambitious policy compromise on the community. OSAID undeniably created a rift in the FOSS community; that rift seriously damaged the OSI's reputation, authority and influence. Meanwhile, OSAID shows no signs of having any positive policy influence on machine learning practitioners, the FOSS community, or regulators."

Kuhn and Fontana also aim to end the code of silence agreement that prevents board members from discussing matters that did not receive unanimous support.

Sam Johnston, a persistent critic of OSI, points to OSI's interest in corporate ties as a potential problem.

"A project like the Open Source AI Definition (OSAID) is a great way to get sponsorships from companies like Google, Cisco, and Mercado Libre, with a 'Deep Dive: Defining Open Source AI Sponsorship' package offering paid access to the invite-only 'co-design' process," he said

"They even managed to reel in a $250k grant from the Sloan Foundation, which also props up several of its 'endorsers.' No doubt there will be another round of sponsorships for the upcoming 2.0 process, with said sponsors again getting front row seats, even after the voting irregularities that flipped the outcome last time.

“For a definition that is already being widely criticized for being too weak, it's interesting that they consider it 'too restrictive' and want to bring in more corporations (11m30s)."

in an email to The Register, OSI's Executive Director . Stefano Maffulli defended the organization's engagement with corporate sponsors and insisted they don't participate in governance.

"Since its founding, the OSI mission has been supported by corporate sponsors, and sponsorship does not provide any role in governance," he wrote. "Sponsors support the work of OSI because they believe in the importance of objective, measurable standards for Open Source software and the Open Source AI Definition.

"OSI is a public benefits corporation and as such is required to act in the best interest of the public – not those of financial supporters. In fact, sponsors occasionally withdraw support for OSI because we prioritize the pursuit of the organization’s mission over individual interests. Also, funding for OSI continues to diversify, with individual membership growth and grants comprising a bigger part of our funding than in the past."

The upcoming election, which commences on February 28 and is expected to run until Friday, March 7, offers the open source community an opportunity to influence OSI's mission. ®