Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2025/03/19/a-sign-board-agreement.html

An Update Regarding the 2025 Open Source Initiative Elections

I’ve
explained in
other posts that I ran for the 2025 Open Source Initative Board of
Directors in the “Affiliate” district.

Voting closed on MON 2025-03-17 at 10:00 US/Pacific. One hour later,
candidates were surprised to receive an email from OSI demanding
that all candidates sign a Board agreement before results were
posted. This was surprising because during mandatory orientation,
candidates were told the opposite: that a Board agreement need not be
signed until the Board formally appointed you as a Director (as the
elections are only advisory &mdash: OSI’s Board need not follow election
results in any event. It was also surprising because the deadline was a
mere 47 hours later (WED 2025-03-19 at 10:00 US/Pacific).

Many of us candidates attempted to get clarification over the last 46
hours, but OSI has
not
communicated clear answers in response to those requests. Based on
these unclear responses, the best we can surmise is that OSI intends to
modify the ballots cast by Affiliates and Members to remove any candidate
who misses this new deadline. We are loathe to assume the worst, but
there’s little choice given the confusing responses and surprising change
in requirements and deadlines.

So, I decided to sign a Board Agreement with
OSI. Here
is the PDF that I just submitted to the OSI. OSI recommended DocuSign,
but since I refuse to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work,
I emailed it to OSI instead.