OSI End of Year Newsletter

Welcome to the Open Source Initiative’s quarterly newsletter. This particular newsletter will recap the end of 2020 for both the OSI and our Affiliate Members. We hope the information shared in each edition provides you with interesting insights into our initiatives and activities. We also hope to include updates regarding our members and affiliates, as well as the broader open source software community. If you have any ideas for what we cover, or content to include, please feel free to let us know at contact@lists.opensource.org.

OSI News & Updates

Announcing OSI’s New Interim General Manager

In case you haven’t yet heard we have a new interim General Manager! The OSI welcomed Deb Nicholson in August. Nicholson will be supporting the organization through a period of growth and introspection over the upcoming year as stakeholders continue building on the non-profit’s past successes. She will be overseeing day-to-day operations, including marketing, staffing and infrastructure, as well as supporting board and volunteer activities.

We would also like to take this moment to thank Patrick Masson for seven years of service as OSI’s General Manager and Director. He leaves behind a powerful legacy as OSI’s first full-time employee. Masson will be continuing his work as an outside consultant to support this transition as well as supporting FLOSS Desktops For Kids. We wish him all the best, both inside and outside, the open source community.

State of the Source Presentations Available to Watch

Did you miss State of the Source? Not to worry we have you covered! Presentations from our first ever world wide summit are available to view on our Youtube channel. You can find six videos from our State of the Source Summit on Youtube to watch whenever you like. Read more here.

Facebook’s Visdom Project is now Open Source and Transitioned to OSI Affiliate FOSSASIA

OSI Affiliate FOSSASIA welcomes the Visdom data visualization project. The project has been developed at Facebook AI Research since 2017. As part of the transition from Facebook to FOSSASIA Visdom has been relicensed under an OSI approved license – the Apache License 2.0 as fully Open Source. This is a fantastic win for the FOSS community. Visdom is now available on the FOSSASIA GitHub.

Hong Phuc Dang, OSI vice president and FOSSASIA founder says: “I am very happy about Facebook’s decision to license Visdom as Open Source and to transition it to FOSSASIA. We will continue the development of Visdom in cooperation with the developer and user community. We already discussed lots of ideas to move forward on an exciting roadmap with the core team and adding it to FOSSASIA’s Pocket Science Lab applications. We are looking forward to the input and involvement of the community to bring the project to the next level.”

Special thanks to the Visdom development team and Joe Spisak whose role was essential in making this transition happen as well as to Mario Behling for leading the transition team at FOSSASIA. Learn more here. 

Released: Report on Our Member Survey

This year, OSI Board member Elana Hashman began a project to survey OSI’s stakeholders. This was the first time in our history that we have formally surveyed people in our community. Some of the results were surprising and some were expected, but on the whole, the participants we spoke with want to see OSI do “more.” Let’s take a look at some of the highlights. Read more here.

OSI Seeks to Hire Executive Director

This is the culmination of many years of work and dedication on the part of countless individuals, and should be taken as a sign that OSI is maturing as an organization. We are following in the footsteps of many organizations that have come before us: nonprofits often start as a scrappy band of volunteers, which then hire staff for day-to-day operations, and eventually the staff are empowered to lead the organization.

This is a full-time, permanent position, reporting to the Board of Directors, which comes with a competitive salary and benefits. Though we know these processes can take a long time, we are accepting applications starting today, hope to begin interviewing candidates in late January, and aim to bring on the new Executive Director by July.

Might you be the person we’re looking for? Please, apply now! Maybe you know someone who’d be a good fit? Please, pass it on!

Help us get the word out by sharing with your networks. And if you have any thoughts or opinions on where we should share this opportunity to ensure we reach a broad range of applicants, please let us know! Please direct all inquiries to gm@opensource.org.

New OSI Affiliate Members

The .NET Foundation Joins the Open Source Initiative’s Affiliate Program

The Open Source Initiative® (OSI), the international authority in open source licensing, is excited to announce the affiliate membership of the .NET Foundation, the world’s biggest repository of .NET projects and resources. Welcoming the .NET Foundation to the OSI Affiliate program further solidifies the .NET community’s commitment to open source and highlights the open source movement’s continued success across many different platforms. Read more here.

OSI Affiliate Membership is an excellent opportunity for nonprofit organizations, open source projects and foundations, educational institutions (K12 & Higher Ed.), and user groups to more deeply engage in, and with, the open source community, promote the OSI mission, and contribute to the continued awareness and adoption of open source software.

OSI Affiliate Updates

The OSI Affiliate Program allows non-profit and not-for-profit organizations to become OSI members. The program is now open for applications. We’d like to share some news and important information and updates from some of our current Affiliate Members.

Apereo Foundation

BigBlueButton

Brandeis 

  • Many companies, like your own, are starting to leverage open source software to foster innovation and efficiencies. There is a growing need for employees who are well-versed in the dedicated policies and programs that are required to ensure that the investments in open source projects produce the desired benefits while still aligning with the values of the open source communities.  
    The Open Source Technology Management program at Brandeis University can empower and equip your employees with the open source skills that keep your company competitive, innovative, and efficient. Program offerings include:  

    • 4-week long micro-courses 
    • Digital badges
    • Certificate in Open Source Technology Management
    • Graduate-level credit

You have the option to register one employee or an entire cohort. Contact Andie D’Agostino for more details. The next course begins January 11, 2

CAVO

  • California Association of Voting Officials Advisory Board member Dr. Juam Gilbert recently unveiled an open source ballot marking device featured here. CAVO looks forward to  a renewed interest in election system security resulting in GPL open source voting systems 

Creative Commons

Debian

DigitalOcean

Eclipse Foundation 

FOSSASIA

  • FOSSASIA SUMMIT 2021 CALL FOR PROPOSALS: The FOSSASIA Summit, one of Asia’s largest Open Source events, takes place online from 13 to 21 March 2021. The call for speakers is open until 31st January. Please submit your proposal at summit.fossasia.org/speaker-registration  

 

 

  • VISDOM PROJECT TRANSITIONS FROM FACEBOOK TO FOSSASIA AND RELICENSES AS OPEN SOURCE: The Visdom data visualization project has been developed at Facebook AI Research and now in transition to FOSSASIA. Visdom is a flexible tool for creating, organizing, and sharing visualizations of live, rich data supporting PyTorch and Numpy. It has been relicensed under an OSI approved license – the Apache License 2.0. Visdom is available on the FOSSASIA GitHub at github.com/fossasia/visdom/.

FreeBSD

  • As with other organizations involved with OSI, the FreeBSD Foundation found 2020 to be challenging at best.  In spite of those challenges, we were still able to accomplish a lot in support of FreeBSD. Our advocacy work included new bi-weekly FreeBSD Fridays series of introductory talks and the opportunity to promote FreeBSD in new venues around the world. We managed to fund a record breaking number of software development projects, added new infrastructure to the Project and celebrated our 20th Anniversary. You can find out more about our efforts here. We are grateful for the continued support from the FreeBSD Community and organizations like OSI, and look forward to all that we can accomplish in 2021.

Gnome

Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS)

  • Call for Editors
    JOSS is recruiting editors with expertise in bioinformatics, material science, physics, R/statistics, and the social sciences.

Linux Foundation

Linux Professional Institute

KDE e.V.

Mifos

Mozilla Foundation

Network Time Foundation

New Zealand Open Source Society

Open edX

  • The Open edX team is excited to announce something you’ve undoubtedly already noticed.  edX and the Open edX project have new logos.  We hope you like them as much as we do. Same mission, New look. 

Open Preservation Foundation

  • 2020 End of Year Highlights Published. The report showcases the people, projects, events, and achievements that have made the OPF’s tenth anniversary year a success, despite the challenges we have all faced in 2020.
  • Version 1.0 of the Virtual Research Environment (VRE) is now available to download. Developed by the Dutch Digital Heritage Network and the Open Preservation Foundation, the VRE is a “plug & play” virtual machine that aims to lower barriers to using and testing digital preservation software. 

OpenProject

Open Research Institute

  • Good news for Open Source Satellite Work! The United States Department of State has ruled favorably on Open Research Institute’s commodity jurisdiction request, finding that specified “Information and Software for a Digital Microwave Broadband Communications System for Space and Terrestrial Amateur Radio Use” is definitely not subject to State Department jurisdiction under ITAR, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

OpenForum Europe

It is an exciting time for open source in the European policy context. They are going to present their study on the economic impact of open source software and hardware on the European economy that they are conducting for the European Commission. And several interesting speakers will discuss topics such as:

  • Public Sector Innovation & Open Source
  • Institutionalising European Open Source
  • The Future of Open Innovation
  • Open Source and the Green Transition
  • Doing Business in the Open

OSEHRA

OpenMRS

OpenStreetMap

OpenUK

  • OpenUK reinvented itself in 2020 and is really a year old in its current guise, with a purpose of developing and sustaining UK Leadership in Open Technology, open source software, open hardware and open data, doing this through 3 pillars of community, legal and policy and learning.  Each of these interacts with the other and helps us to develop our community, with a loud and cohesive voice, to influence policy and make the UK a great place for Open, with an incredible and experienced community/ workforce now and in the future.
  • With the pandemic we pivoted on our activities and moved online with Awards and a Kids Camp – the animated digital course and ezine is Creative Commons and free to use from openuk.uk/openkidscamp. Each lesson teaches one minute about open source, and lesson one is narrated by Imogen Heap, whose MiniMU glove kit (open hardware) forms the basis of the teaching. The course is a GNOME Community Challenge Phase 2 winner.

OW2

Powering Potential

Python Software Foundation

  • From October 19th to 23rd, 47 participants gathered for the first-ever virtual 2020 Python Core Developer Sprint. This included 41 Python core developers, 3 triagers, and 3 core dev mentees. The core dev sprint is an annual week-long meeting in which the CPython core team has the opportunity to work directly together on projects and get to know one another better, free from outside distractions.

Software Freedom Conservancy

Sourcefabric

sysarmy

  • This year due to the pandemic they shifted their nerdear.la event to an online format and had over 32,000+ people registering from all over the world!
  • Are already planning nerdear.la for Oct 2021, and would love to hear from OSI affiliates that would like to give a presentation and/or sponsor the conference (big discounts for OSI members!).
  • Check out highlights and talks from their past nerdear.la event here!

The Perl Foundation

TYPO3 Association

Wikimedia Foundation

WordPress Foundation

Xerte Project