Beyond her professional achievements, Nadia is deeply committed to the open-source community. She serves as a Board Director and the 2024 President of KAIYUANSHE. She is also a member of the China Computer Federation (CCF) open-source committee, China Institute of Communications (CIC) open-source committee, and Open Source Communication Working Committee of the China Association for Science and Technology, as well as the Deputy Secretary of the Chance Open-Source Foundation. 

She also plays an instrumental role in organizing and volunteering for various open-source events. She is the main organizer and Track Chair of CommunityOverCode (formerly known as ApacheCon) Asia, Track Chair of CoC NA and Speaker of CoC EU. Nadia is also a core organizer of OpenInfra Days China and has significantly contributed as the co-founder and conference chair of OSPO Summit and Dev.Together Summit. Previously, she has spoken at COSCUP, State of Open Con, DevRelCon London.

Nadia Jiang is an Affiliate Candidate nominated by KAIYUANSHE. KAIYUANSHE is a non-profit open source alliance based in China and contributing globally, dedicated to promoting open source as a new lifestyle for human beings, focusing on open source software, community development, open source governance, open culture, open standards, etc. It has initiated China Open Source Conferences (COSCon) and China Open Source Annual Reports.

How the candidate will contribute to the board

KAIYUANSHE and OSI have established a strong foundation for collaboration. Since joining OSI as an Affiliate Member in 2016, we’ve achieved significant milestones together. Notably, we invited Tony Wasserman, a former OSI board director, to our 2018 China Open Source Conference, marking OSI’s 20th anniversary. Our efforts to translate OSI’s high-quality content into Chinese have significantly contributed to promoting open-source culture within China. A recent achievement includes the complete translation and publication of all 17 videos from the OSI-led Deep Dive AI Webinar Series. Additionally, we’ve played a pivotal role in securing OSI approval for the Mulan PSL and participated actively in the Open Source Congress in Geneva.

This year, I’m eager to deepen our collaboration with OSI, acting as a bridge between the Chinese and global communities. Together, we aim to champion open-source culture worldwide, highlighting the intrinsic value of open source and advocating for it as a new lifestyle for human beings.

Why the candidate should be elected

I have a great passion for open-source and have made significant, long-term contributions to multiple open-source organizations. I believe my experience in contributing to various non-profit organizations (Federations/Communities/Foundations) and my professional background in DevRel enable me to collaborate efficiently with the board to drive impactful initiatives.

The number of open-source users and developers in Asia is rapidly increasing, and it’s essential that the voices of Asian open-source developers are heard more broadly. As the 2024 President of KAIYUANSHE and OSI Affiliate Member representative, the largest non-profit open-source community in China, I hope to serve as a bridge between China and the global community, bringing Asian perspectives to the board and extend the reach of OSI’s high-quality content, spirit, and culture to a broader audience.

How the candidate will contribute to the board

Miles was an ordinary council member of Linux Australia in 2019, which
Having worked in both civil service and private industry, Miles would seek to promote the adoption of quality open source solutions in professional environments to combat the tendency to select well marketed closed-source alternatives (which can often have other inferior qualities too). More than this, Miles would like to foster the professional environments to build-in contributing to open source projects (particularly within government environments).

Why the candidate should be elected

Miles’ 30 year experience in using open source software in professional situations (both private and government) provides a good background for advocating for the adoption and support of open source within these environments.

Miles’ brings experience of membership of and working within open source and community technology organisations.

From 2008 until 2014, she worked as the business manager for KDE e.V., the non-profit supporting the global KDE community. As the first employee, she played a crucial role in professionalizing and growing the organization. Working closely with the board of directors, she was in charge of partner management and the membership program, as well as organizing international KDE contributor conferences in Europe and the US, and supporting the global KDE contributor community. Claudia also has experience in marketing in the software industry.

Before joining OASIS Open in 2021, she worked as a consultant with large and small companies to help them develop and implement community building and marketing strategies with a focus on corporate Open Source software products.

How the candidate will contribute to the board

With 15+ years of experience working with community-led organizations as well as commercial enterprises in the OSS world, Claudia has a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities in this area. Working with Open Source projects in an Open Standards organization, Claudia can also bridge the gap between these two ecosystems.

Claudia has a can-do attitude and will always try to find pragmatic solutions to challenges. She is a strong believer in knowledge sharing and that learning from others is crucial to the success of any team or organization.

As an EU citizen, she brings a European perspective to the table with an interest in topics like digital autonomy, security, and privacy. With the EU increasingly regulating software, and thus, also Open Source software, Claudia can help OSI through proactive advocacy for open-source principles in the EU public and corporate sector.

Why the candidate should be elected

Claudia is a leader for OASIS Open in the Open Source community and she will bring the same commitment and dedication to the OSI board. She has been an active OSS community member since 2008 and can leverage an extensive network across the ecosystem. She has several years of experience working with a volunteer board of directors at KDE e.V. in areas ranging from finance and partner management to strategy and community management.

Having worked in software marketing for a couple of years, Claudia has strong communication skills and knows how to convey complex technical concepts to non-technical audiences. In doing so, Claudia is able to bring together partnerships from previously unknown connections to create a strong foundation for collaboration.

Claudia is passionate about Open Source and its values of open participation, transparency, diverse collaboration and open innovation. She can contribute to the OSI board by broadening its community engagement with her extensive network, fostering inclusivity, encouraging community input, and establishing partnerships with various stakeholders.

Should she be elected to the OSI board, she is interested in focusing on organizational development, supporting the Standards Committee and helping with outreach.

On the professional side, Carl worked as a software engineer on the open-source cloud service Nextcloud and was an IT consultant at KDAB. He works at GnuPG on integrating PGP into KMail, Kleopatra and other KDE-related projects for usage in the European public sector.

He currently lives in Berlin but is originally from France and he maintains a blog: https://carlschwan.eu/

How the candidate will contribute to the board

My experience inside the KDE community can be precious to OSI, as KDE is an almost 30-year-old open-source organization and one of the largest open-source communities not backed by a company. I want to help the OSI by sharing some experience accumulated by the KDE project over the years.

I also enjoy helping open-source projects on the technical side, which might not be that helpful for OSI, but also on everything else. For example, I can represent OSI at local and international events, help with fundraising, and handle the social media presence of OSI and its websites.

Why the candidate should be elected

I’m passionate about Open Source software and want to help the open-source movement in any way possible. Getting elected to the OSI board would be a continuation of the work I’ve been doing for years in promoting open source to companies and the public sector. While I am not a lawyer, I have always been interested in open-source licenses and appreciate some projects like REUSE and SPDX, which simplify licensing for open-source projects.

How the candidate will contribute to the board

The candidate has experience on both free software / open-source software and artificial intelligence. He has been an official Debian developer since 2018. He has been studying artificial intelligence since 2015. The candidate can help the board for the definition drafting process for the Open Source AI, and help the board understand details in AI systems. The candidate can verify existing AI systems with respect to the draft definition.

Why the candidate should be elected

One of the most important work for OSI in 2024 is the Open Source AI Definition. OSI board needs a person who is very familiar with both free software / open source software, and (especially) artificial intelligence in very depth. I’m not quite good at reading legal documents like licenses, but that’s why we work together for good.

I went on to spend my whole career in open source, with over 20 years in across Italy, The Netherlands, The East and West Coast of the US, garnering experience in each of the major constituents of the ecosystem: individual contributors, contributing corporates and open source foundations.

I started on the community side, in an individual capacity as a contributor (Apache Maven), committer and release manager (Apache Chemistry, Spring Surf), and community builder (alfresco-sdk).

I had the luck of being paid for my open source work when I joined Alfresco (a UK headquarters open source content management system). Over 7 years, I covered several individual contributor and management roles across Engineering, Professional Services, Support, Sales Engineering and Product Management. During this period I also participated in open standardization processes, like CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services) under OASIS.

In 2016, I became the initial Executive Director for the Symphony Software Foundation, a 501c6 open source foundation created by the largest global investment banks in the world to democratize secure communications technology in financial services. Founding Members included Goldman Sachs, Blackrock, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Citi, Deutsche Bank, S&P.

Less than two years later I led the Board to rebrand the Symphony Software Foundation into FINOS, the Fintech Open Source Foundation, with the broader mission of enabling individuals and companies to better collaborate on financial technology, seizing the major opportunity for open collaboration in a conservative and highly regulated industry.

In two years we grew to 40 Members with a diverse representation across financial institutions, technology, data and fintech vendors, and hosted over 30 open source (landscape.finos.org) and open standard projects (e.g. fdc3.finos.org), with major contributions amongst others by Goldman Sachs (legend.finos.org), JPMorgan (perspective.finos.org), Morgan Stanley (morphir.finos.org) and Deutsche Bank (waltz.finos.org).

In early 2020 right before the pandemic, I led FINOS to join the Linux Foundation umbrella to accelerate growth, ensure long term sustainability of our efforts and seeking to reduce fragmentation in the Foundation’s ecosystem.

Since then we almost doubled our Membership base, growing our global footprint with notable additions of Wellington Management, Google, Societe Generale, Natwest, Lloyds and AXA, continued to grow our project portfolio with a strong focus on better regulatory technology and collaborating directly with regulators (e.g. Common Domain Model – https://www.finos.org/common-domain-model), and grew the Open Source in Finance Forum, the sole event for open source in Financial Services, to over 800 people across NYC and London.

Besides the growth of the FINOS Community, perhaps the most notable achievement is that open source is nowadays much better understood in this industry, with financial institutions (and regulators) not only structuring themselves for open source (I personally witnessed 20+ OSPOs created in 2022), but engaging in contributions not only specific to their industry but also upstream (e.g. OpenSSF, Kubernetes, Pandas, etc.)

As of September 2022, I’ve taken on a dual role as General Manager of the newly launched Linux Foundation Europe, created to foster regional open collaborations in the European continent and grow them through the global platform of the Linux Foundation (e.g. openwallet.foundation) . While I’m still based in the Bay Area until relocating to Europe in a not so far future, I spend at least 20% of my time in Europe working closely with the EU and public sector, the Linux Foundation Europe Members (linuxfoundation.eu/en/members), individual contributors and engaging in collaborative initiatives with other open source foundation (e.g. Open Forum Europe, Eclipse, etc) on pressing community and policy matters (e.g. CRA, Fragmentation Report).

Outside of my day job(s), I am advisor for OpenBB (openbb.co), an open source investment platform.

On the personal front, I am a passionate Napoli (Italian football) fan and love playing football any chance I get. I love reggae/dancehall music and I enjoy cooking – unsurprisingly – Italian cuisine. I have extensive public speaking experience, both as keynote speaker and technical workshops, and I speak fluently Italian, English and Spanish, with a basic understanding of Dutch and French.

How the candidate will contribute to the board

I have the utmost respect for OSI as a fundamental institution at the very heart of the functioning of the global open source ecosystem.

Here’s a few areas which I assume would be beneficial for OSI:

– Introductions at executive, legal and technology level out of my extensive network in technology and financial services, across US and Europe
– Represent and catalyze attention, action and compliance of the hundreds of open source projects in the Linux Foundation
– Where applicable, co-promotion/co-organization of OSI initiatives through the platform of the Linux Foundation
– Support consensus building through my extensive board experiencing, lead / participating in Board committees as appropriate
– Represent OSI in public speaking engagements as well as meetings across private and public sector
– Produce blogs, podcasts, content for the OSI if desired

Ultimately, should I be elected I plan to contribute actively in the areas deemed most relevant by the Board of Directors and by the Executive Director, as I see myself at the service of the organization rather than the other way around.

Why the candidate should be elected

First off, it would be a dream and an incredible honor to serve in the OSI Board. I was born and bred in open source and I wouldn’t be here hadn’t I started contributing in the flourishing open source decade of the early 2000s.

This makes me an extremely motivated candidate, with the goal of making OSI ever more successful, as OSS evolves in the face of systemic sustainability challenges and existential challenges posed by AI.

As you decide your vote, I would ask you to consider I have:

– Been a contributor myself
– First-hand experience in all the constituents of the OSS ecosystem (contributor, commercial, foundation)
– Extensive Board leadership experience, having grown FINOS from the ground up through a pivot and a merger
– Unique experience of building a “vertical” foundation in one of highly regulated industry, a construct I expect to see ever more often as every industry undergoes digital transformation
– A global open source network, through my EU, UK and US tenures
– Developed, through FINOS, a clear vision for collaboration of public sector (lawmakers, regulators, academic), corporate and individual contributors
– Deep understanding of legal aspects of OSS, having build FINOS’ governance from the inception

Thank you for your consideration!

How the candidate will contribute to the board

Anne-Marie brings existing Board level experience. As Chair of the Apereo Board over the last 3 years she has led the replacement of our Executive Director, a full operational and financial review, and is currently working on a revision of our strategy, due to complete as her Board term ends. She also has significant Board experience from other domains having sat for over a decade on the Board of a building preservation charity in the UK.

She has experience dealing with government representatives through her work in Canada and with Apereo. Through her work in Scotland leading Girl Geek Scotland (a women in IT advocacy group) for 3 years she has experience working with the private tech sector.

Through her senior leadership roles in higher education she brings financial, organisation, communication, and change management skills to the OSI, along with her education domain experience. She brings a wide global network of contacts within the open education movement along with strong community building skills.

Why the candidate should be elected

Having worked in higher education technology for over 20 years, Anne-Marie brings experience of the realities of implementing open source successfully in a domain that has been rapidly moving towards adoption of commercial and proprietary tech in many countries.

As awareness of surveillance cultures and the predatory nature of educational technology companies become more visible post-COVID she believes there is a real moment appearing for strong advocacy for change and wider adoption of open source. She has been writing and advocating for changes to public sector procurement practices for over a decade to make the adoption of open source more possible, seeing this area as a systemic barrier at present.

She believes that education is a particularly important domain for open source communities to engage with, as it is a crucial opportunity to build the awareness and talent that can support the wider global open source movement.

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.

Gaël started his open source career in 2004 as a co-founder of a European open source startup that was a founding member of OW2, before joining the Eclipse Foundation 10 years ago, to dedicate all his time and energy to building bridges between individuals, small companies, larger organizations, and research institutions, mainly in Europe.

Recently, Gaël has been leading several strategic initiatives, starting from being a leader in moving the Eclipse Foundation to Europe in 2020, and including the creation of the OSPO Alliance, the open and transparent initiative, helping companies discover and better understand open source, and approach the creation of an OSPO. The OSPO Alliance was founded by several European non profit organizations, with a specific goal to help all sorts of companies (and not only big tech companies) grow their skills in open source in order to benefit more from open source, and to become more influential in the different open source ecosystems.

In 2021 and 2022, Gaël has been the program chair for OpenSource Experience in Paris, which is one of the main Open Source events in Europe.

In his keynote at the 2023 OFE Policy Summit, Gaël called for more involvement of large companies in the global open source ecosystem, not only as users, but as supporters, protectors and leaders of open source as an innovation model.

How the candidate will contribute to the board

Gaël will contribute to the OSI board on three main topics:

– Over the last 5 years, open source has been threatened by organizations that want to use the term “open source” to name licenses that are not OSI approved and don’t comply with the OSD. As more and more people and organizations claim to be doing open source, some of them lose sight of the OSD, and how the capability to use, study, modify and redistribute code enables the free flow of technology worldwide and enables better collaboration and faster innovation.
As a board member, Gaël wants to help the OSI reinforce its position as the trusted organization that holds the definition of open source. This covers two aspects: First, we need to educate newcomers, including large open source user companies such from the traditional industry, to the values of open source and how they provide the foundation for successful collaboration. Second, we need to make sure that the words “open source” refer to the OSD, are not diverted for the benefit of companies that develop strong vendor lock-in on their OSS technologies, or want to monetize their patent portfolio.

– More and more regulations directly or indirectly address open source, and can have unintended consequences on the global open source ecosystem. We have a strong example with the CRA in Europe. Specific organizations, like OpenForum Europe, advocate for open source in their region. Regularly, we hear key stakeholders telling us that the open source community doesn’t fight enough for its interests. OSI is already significatively active on policy topics, but I want to support OSI as a board member in leading on policy topics, and in coordinating the specialized think tanks across geographies.

– As a European, I support the idea that open source can be a powerful instrument for digital sovereignty. This is not only true in Europe but in all other places. And this is not about protectionism but about a super power of open source technologies: With open source, every country, every geography can move the needle from having access to proprietary software to training the skilled people to adopt, use, and improve OSS technologies. I think that the OSI should play a stronger role in promoting this worldwide.

Why the candidate should be elected

For the last ten years in his position at the Eclipse Foundation, Gael has been helping dozens of projects establish themselves within the Eclipse community, along with helping many companies, large and small, adopt, use, and sustainably succeed with open source.

When bootstrapping the OSPO Alliance, Gaël has demonstrated to have the right set of values to work for the interest of the global open source ecosystem.

Finally, as a European software engineer, concretely involved in growing adoption of open source by different stakeholders that are not only new to open source, but sometimes new to software, Gaël brings concrete ideas on the three main topics listed before to help grow the visibility of the OSI to a new group of organizations.

Thanks for your time in reading this. If you have any questions, you can contact Gaël on Mastodon or LinkedIn.

How the candidate will contribute to the board

Massive adoption of open source software across all sectors has thrown up many new challenges for the open source community. The principles of our movement are increasingly under threat, principally because of misunderstandings about the freedoms at the heart of the open source definition and why they exist.

In my experience the OSI is under-represented in the mainstream of adopters, with relatively little understanding of the context around the OSD. My day job is building awareness and community on a global scale, and I would bring those skills and experiences to bear in growing the OSI community, promoting awareness of the mission and goals as well as building a better understanding of the meaning of open source.

I would also support the executive function as required bringing practical organizational management, open source engineering, governance and Board experience.

Why the candidate should be elected

I am not a lawyer, I represent open source end users and the organizations who rely on it, but I also have a solid understanding of licenses and the OSD. I believe that a proper understanding of why those licenses exist in the form that they do is critical to the future of open source software.

I’ve been a user, a developer, a contributor, an advocate and an educator, and have worked for many years with end users across almost every industry. I have a deep bias towards action, and am equally comfortable at a strategic level or being involved more directly in execution. I’m both a pragmatic thinker and a doer, and focused on achievable goals and outcomes.

In my day job I work with license compliance and open source users across the world, and can bring that perspective to the board. I also have significant experience around new consumption models like cloud and SaaS, and in emerging technologies and their potential impacts

Based in Europe, I am engaged in UK leadership and global collaboration across the entire field of open technologies, and have deep links across many different ecosystems.