Thanks for your your questions, Luis! Answers below:

Your time: You have 24 hours in the day and could do many different things. Why do you want to give some of those hours to OSI? What do you expect your focus to be during those hours?

Because I really hate sleeping 🙂

Kidding aside, in terms of why:
– on a personal level because I truly believe in strengthening the role of OSI as the neutral steward for the very definition of open source and I can’t think of a better way than driving my multi-faceted experience across different constituencies (individual contributor, corporate open source, foundations) in service of the Board.
– on a professional level, because the Linux Foundation’s global presence and hosting of projects across every level of the stack and industry allows me to provide a very broad perspective and provide representation to a very large slice of the open source community might otherwise not be represented in the OSI.

In terms of focus, as I discussed in my candidate information, I think I see myself helping building consensus in the board by engaging in active collaboration with the other board members, active leading conversations with the private and public sector, as well as expanding the OSI support through introductions and making connections outside of the tech industry (e.g. finance).

Licensing process: The organization has proposed improvements to the license-review process. What do you think of them?

Given IANAL, I don’t believe I am in the position of making categorical statements on the output of a working group which I have not participated in or even followed extremely closely. As an general approach, I am more often than not supportive of progressive / incremental improvements (generally on everything, as I believe no process is ever perfect) to what was perceived as a confusing review process by the community, especially in the wake of the heated debates in the open source community at large on new licenses emerged in the last years. Having said that, I do particularly favor the 2 explicit requirements for new licenses to “describe what gap not filled by currently existing licenses that the new license will fill” and “compare it to and contrast it with the most similar OSI-approved license(s)”, because it affirmatively puts the burden on the submitter to demonstrate the actual general need for a new license, hence fostering consolidation rather than proliferation.

Broader knowledge: What should OSI do about the tens of millions of people who regularly collaborate to build software online (often calling that activity, colloquially, open source) but don’t know what OSI is or what it does?

I think the answer truly depends on what is the direct benefit / value for collaborators out there that are not aware of the OSI and its role. Meaning, if a developer is *actually* doing open source, i.e. working on a project that uses a license that respects the OSD, then I don’t think they necessarily need to know about the OSI. On the other hand, I would focus OSIs attention and advocacy on those developer who *think* they are doing open source and instead they are either collaborating on a project with no license, a pseudo/wannabe open source license or even worse on a project whose sole purpose is openwashing. Especially the latter phenomenon is still quite widespread in less mature industries (e.g. finance) where the “open” buzzword is largely abused.

Regulation: New industry regulation in both the EU and US suggests government will be more involved in open source in the future. What role do you think OSI should play in these discussions? How would you, as a board member, impact that?

I think the OSI should be at the forefront of these conversations, because regulations like the CRA or the recent US Cyber Security Strategy have the potential to effectively massively impact open source as we know it, and either inadvertently or purposefully shunt the unique innovation engine it has proven to be over the last decades. As a Board member, I would advocate for OSI to be the lead of a broad coalition across the largest open source non-profit organizations, commercial open source companies and individual contributors to effectively impact legislation before it takes effect and over time. As GM for Linux Foundation Europe I would expect my support to be more effective in EU level regulations.

Solo maintainers: The median number of developers on open source projects is one, and regulation and industry standards are increasing their burden. How (if at all) should OSI address that? Is there tension between that and industry needs?

I am not sure how well the OSI is currently positioned to address the issue solo, but I do think that, in collaboration with other entities, OSI can and should be an advocate for individual contributors, by helping more effectively identify projects with critical sustainability issues and then campaign for private/public sector funding projects for the long tail that don’t have an established financial sponsorship model (e.g. open source foundations, crowdfunding, direct-to-maintainer funding platforms). Ultimately, while I am very conscious of the tension between between individuals and industry – and early in my open source career I certainly have been supportive of more divisive positions – but I currently am of the opinion that in this time and age we will not be able to address some of the systemic sustainability issues with open source without private sector investment and participation. And ultimately, as I’ve learned in creating a community in one of the most conservative industries in the world – finance – I firmly believe open source can and should be a positive-sum game, whereby inherently there’s value produced for each constituent, i.e. business value for the private and social value for public sector. It’s all about how value is then fairly redistributed to individuals, and I welcome the opportunity to work with the OSI board to figure out how.

OSI initiative on AI: What did you think of the recent OSI initiative on AI? If you liked it, what topics would you suggest for similar treatment in the future? If you didn’t like it, what would you improve, or do instead?

While I haven’t had a chance to follow in a great deal of detail – yet, as I said in my candidate notes, AI is redefining what open source means and I believe it’s important for OSI to evolve the scope of its activities to reflect that.

Per the previous questions, I think – potentially connected – topics that could use similar treatments would be:
– The relationship and active engagement of public sector in open source to drive collective value and
– open source ecosystem sustainability

Responsible licensing: There are now multiple initiatives around “responsible” or “ethical” licensing, particularly (but not limited to) around machine learning. What should OSI’s relationship to these movements and organizations be?

While I am instinctively driven to explore common points with these initiatives as I do firmly believe in the social value / social responsibility of open source, as IANAL, I am quite wary of any unintended consequences changes to the current ethos of the OSD might have on the overall open source ecosystem.

Thanks again for considering my candidacy!

Your time: You have 24 hours in the day and could do many different things. Why do you want to give some of those hours to OSI? What do you expect your focus to be during those hours?

Licensing process: The organization has proposed improvements to the license-review process. What do you think of them?

Broader knowledge: What should OSI do about the tens of millions of people who regularly collaborate to build software online (often calling that activity, colloquially, open source) but don’t know what OSI is or what it does?

Regulation: New industry regulation in both the EU and US suggests government will be more involved in open source in the future. What role do you think OSI should play in these discussions? How would you, as a board member, impact that?

Solo maintainers: The median number of developers on open source projects is one, and regulation and industry standards are increasing their burden. How (if at all) should OSI address that? Is there tension between that and industry needs?

OSI initiative on AI: What did you think of the recent OSI initiative on AI? If you liked it, what topics would you suggest for similar treatment in the future? If you didn’t like it, what would you improve, or do instead?

Responsible licensing: There are now multiple initiatives around “responsible” or “ethical” licensing, particularly (but not limited to) around machine learning. What should OSI’s relationship to these movements and organizations be?