Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2025/03/21/open-source-initiative-osi-2025-elections-unfair-results-hidden.html

I ran in the “Affiliate district” in the 2025 election for
Board of Directors of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) on
a joint platform for OSI Reform with my colleague, Richard
Fontana (who among other accomplishments, is currently Senior Commercial
Counsel at IBM’s Red Hat).

After voting closed, we received a strange request demanding that we sign
the OSI‘s Board Agreement
within 47 hours — and before we or anyone else (outside of OSI) were
told the election results. This varies from all past elections in OSI’s
history, and instructions that 2025 candidates received in orientation.
Fontana specifically verified with a question during orientation that
candidates need not sign the Board Agreement unless/until we
succeeded in the election and were a true candidate for a Directorship.
Tracy Hinds, then chairperson of OSI’s Board, confirmed this verbally for
all candidates at the orientation. (And, that position is consistent with
logic, since the OSI elections are purely advisory and its Board has
discretion to ignore the election results in any event.

My and
Fontana’s platform had four planks — all of which called for
reforms to OSI’s status quo.
The third
plank