Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2025/03/03/osi-board-elections-problems.html
Update 2025-03-21: This blog post is extremely long (if
you’re reading this, you must already know I’m terribly long-winded). I
was in the middle of consolidating it with other posts to make a final,
single “wrap up” post of the OSI elections when, in the middle
of doing that, I was told
that Linux
Weekly News (LWN) published an article written by Joe Brockmeier. As
such,I’ve carefully left the text below as it stood it stood 2025-03-20
03:42 UTC, which I believe is the version that Brockmeier sourced for his
story (only changes past the line “Original Post” have been
HTML format fixes). (I hate as much as you do having to scour
archive.org/web to find the right version.) Nevertheless, I wouldn’t have
otherwise left this here in its current form because it’s a huge, real-time
description that as such doesn’t make the best historical reference record of these event. I used my blog as a campaigning tool (for
reasons discussed below) before I
knew how much interest there would ultimately be in the
FOSS community
about the 2025 OSI Board of Directors election. Since this was used as a
source for the LWN article, keeping the original record easy to find is
obviously important and folks shouldn’t have to go to archive.org/web to
find it. Nevertheless, if you’re just digging into this story fresh, I
don’t really recommend reading the below. Instead, I suggest just
reading Brockmeier’s
LWN article because he’s a journalist and writes better and more
concise than me, and he’s unbiased and the below is my (understandably) biased view as a
candidate who lived through this problematic election.
Original Post
I recently
announced that I was nominated for the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Board
of Directors as an “Affiliate” candidate. I chose to run
as an (admittedly) opposition candidate against the existing status quo,
on a “ticket” with my colleague, Richard Fontana, who is
running as an (opposition) “Member” candidate.
These elections are important; they matter with regard to the future of
FOSS. OSI
recently published the “Open Source Artificial Intelligence
Definition” (OSAID). One of OSI’s stated purposes of the OSID is to
convince the entire EU and other governments and policy agencies will adopt
this Definition as official for all citizens. Those stakes aren’t
earth-shattering, but they are reasonably high stakes. (You
can read
i a blog post I wrote on the subject or Fontana’s and my shared
platform for more information about OSAID.)
I have worked and/or volunteered for nonprofits like OSI for years. I
know it’s difficult to get important work done — funding is always
too limited. So, to be sure I’m not misquoted: no, I don’t think the
election is “rigged”. Every problem described herein can
easily be attributed to innocent human error, and, as such, I don’t think
anyone at OSI has made an intentional plan to make the elections
unfair. Nevertheless, these mistakes and irregularities (particularly the
second one below) have led to an unfair 2025 OSI Directors
Election. I call on the OSI to reopen the nominations for
a few days, correct these problems, and then extend the voting
time accordingly. I don’t blame the OSI for these honest
mistakes, but I do insist that they be corrected. This really does matter:
since this isn’t just a local club. OSI is an essential FOSS org that works
worldwide and claims to have a consensus mandate for determining what is
(or is not) “open source”. Thus, (if the OSI intends to
continue with an these advisory elections), OSI’s elections need the
greatest integrity and legitimacy. Irregularities must be corrected and
addressed to maintain the legitimacy of this important organization.
Regarding all these items below, I did raise all the concerns privately
with the OSI staff before publicly listing them here. In every case, I
gave OSI at least 20-30% of the entire election cycle to respond privately
before discussing the problems publicly. (I have still received no direct
response from the OSI on any of these issues.)
(Recap on) First Irregularity
The first irregularity was
the miscommunication
about the nomination deadline
(as covered in
the press.
Instead of using the time zone of OSI’s legal home (in California), or the
standard FOSS community deadline of AoE (anywhere on earth) time, OSI
surreptitiously chose UTC and failed to communicate that decision properly.
According to my sources, only one email of 3(+) emails about the elections
included the fully qualified datetime of the deadline. Everywhere else
(including everywhere on OSI’s website) published only the date, not the
time. It was reasonable for nominators to assume the deadline was
US/Pacific — particularly since the nomination form still worked after
23:59 UTC passed.
Second Irregularity
Due to that first irregularity, this second (and most egregious)
irregularity is compounded even further.
All
year long, the OSI has communicated that, for 2025, elections are
for two “Member” seats
and one “Affiliate”
seat. Only
today (already 70% through the election cycle) did
OSI
(silently) correct this error. This change was made
well after nominations had closed (in every TZ). By
itself, the change in available seats after nominations closed makes
the 2025 OSI elections unfair. Here’s why: the Members and the
Affiliates are two entirely different sets of electorates.
Many candidates made complicated decisions about which seats to run
for based on the number of seats available in each class.
OSI is aware of that, too, because (a) we told them that during candidate
orientation, and
(b) Luke
said so publicly in their blog post (and OSI directly responded to Luke
in the press).
If we had known there were two Affiliate seats and
just one Member seat, Debian (an OSI Affiliate) would have
nominated Luke a week early to the Affiliate seat. Instead,
Debian’s leadership, Luke, Fontana, and I had a complex discussion in the
final week of nominations on how best
to run
as a “ticket of three”. In that discussion, Debian
leadership decided to nominate no one (instead of nominating
Luke) precisely because I was already nominated on a platform that
Debian supported, and Debian chose not to run a candidate against me for
the (at the time, purported) one Affiliate seat available.
But this irregularity didn’t just impact Debian, Fontana, Luke,
and me. I was nominated by four different Affiliates. My primary pitch to
ask them to nominate me was that there was just one Affiliate seat
available. Thus, I told them, if they nominated someone else, that candidate
would be effectively running against me. I’m quite sure at least one of
those Affiliates would have wanted to nominate someone else if only OSI had
told them the truth when it mattered: that Affiliates could easily elect both
me and a different candidate for two available Affiliate
seats. Meanwhile, who knows what other affiliates who nominated no one
would have done differently? OSI surely doesn’t know that. OSI has
treated every one of their Affiliates unfairly by changing the number of
seats available after the nominations closed.
Due to this Second Irregularity alone, I call on the OSI to reopen
nominations and reset the election cycle. The mistakes (as
played) actually benefit me as a candidate — since now I’m
running against a small field and there are two seats available. If
nominations reopen, I’ll surely face a crowded field with many viable
candidates added. Nevertheless, I am disgusted that I
unintentionally benefited from OSI’s election irregularity and I ask OSI
take corrective action to make the 2025 election fair.
The remaining irregularities are minor (by comparison, anyway), but I want
to make sure I list all the irregularities that I’ve seen in the 2025 OSI
Board Elections in this one place for everyone’s reference:
Third Irregularity
I was surprised when
OSI
published the slates of Affiliate candidates that they were not in
any (forward or reverse) alphabetical order — not candidate’s
first, last, or nominator name. Perhaps the slots in the voter’s guide
were assigned randomly, but if so, that is not disclosed
to the electorate. And, Who is listed first, you ask? Why,
the incumbent Affiliate candidate. The issue of
candidate ordering in voting guides and ballots has
been well
studied academically and, unsurprisingly, being listed first is known
to be an advantage. Given that incumbents already have an
advantage in all elections, putting the incumbent first without
stating that the slots in the voter guide were randomly assign makes the
2025 OSI Board election unfair.
I contacted OSI leadership within hours of the posting of the candidates
about this issue (at time of writing, that was four days ago) and they have
refused to respond nor have they corrected the issue. This compounds the
error, because OSI consciously choosing to list the incumbent
Affiliate candidate first in the voter guide on purpose.
Note that this problem is not confined to the “Affiliate
district”.
In the
“Member district”, my running mate, Richard Fontana, is
listed last in the voter guide for no apparent reason.
Fourth Irregularity
It’s (ostensibly) a good idea for the OSI to run a discussion forum for
the candidates (and kudos to OSI
( in
this instance, anyway ) for using the GPL’d Discourse software for the
purpose). however, the requirements to create an account and
respond to the questions exclude some Affiliate candidates.
Specifically, the OSI has stated that Affiliate candidates, and the
Affiliates that are their
electorate, need
not be Members of the OSI. (This is actually the very first item in
OSI’s election
FAQ!) Yet, to join the discussion forum,
one must become a member of
the OSI! While it might be reasonable to require all
Affiliate candidates become OSI Members, this was not disclosed until the
election started, so it’s unfair!
Some already argue
that since there is a free
(as in price) membership that this is a non-issue. I disagree, and
here’s why: Long ago, I had already decided that I would not become a
Member of OSI (for free or otherwise) because OSI
Members who
do not pay money are denied voting rights in these
elections! Yes, you read that right: the election for OSI
Directors in the “Members” seat literally has a poll
tax! I refuse to let OSI count me as a Member when the class of
membership they are offering to people who can’t afford to pay is a
second-class citizenship in OSI’s community. Anyway, there is no reason
that one should have to become a Member to post on the discussion fora
— particularly given that OSI has clearly stated that the Affiliate
candidates (and the Affiliate representatives who vote) are not required
to be individual Members.
A desire for Individual Membership is understandable for an nonprofit.
Nonprofits often need to prove they represent a constituency. I don’t
blame any nonprofit for trying to build a constituency for itself. The
issue is how. Counting Members as “anyone who ever posted
on our discussion forum” is confusing and problematic — and
becomes doubly so when Voting Memberships are available for
purchase. Indeed, OSI’s
own annual reporting conflates the two types of Members confusingly, as
“Member district”
candidate Chad
Whitacre asked about during the campaign (but received no reply).
I point as counter-example to the models used
by GNOME Foundation
(GF) and Software In the
Public Interest (SPI). These organizations are direct peers to the OSI,
but both GF and SPI have an application for membership that evaluates on
the primary criterion of what contributions the individual has made to FOSS
(be they paid or volunteer). AFAICT, for SPI and GF, no memberships
require a donation, aren’t handed out merely for signing up to the org’s
discussion fora, and all members (once qualified) can vote.
Fifth Irregularity
This final irregularity is truly minor, but I mention it for completeness.
On the Affiliate candidate page, it seems as if each candidate is only
nominated by one affiliate. When I submitted my candidate statement, since
OSI told me they automatically filled in the nominating org, I had assumed
that all my nominating orgs would be listed. Instead, they listed only one.
If I’d known that, I’d have listed them at the beginning of my candidate
statement; my candidate statement was drafted under the assumption all my
nominating orgs would be listed elsewhere.
Sixth Irregularity
Update 2025-03-07. I received an unsolicited (but
welcome) email from an Executive Director of one
of OSI’s Affiliate
Organizations. This individual indicated they’d voted for me (I was
pleasantly surprised, because I thought their org was pro-OSAID, which I
immediately wrote back and told them). The irregularity here is
that OSI told candidates that the campaign period would
be 10 days, including two weekends in most places —
including orientation phone calls for candidates. They started the
campaign late, and didn’t communicate that they weren’t extending the
timeline, so the campaign period was about 6.5 days and included
only one weekend.
Meanwhile, during this extremely brief 6.5 day period, the election
coordinator at OSI was unavailable to answer inquiries from
candidates and Affiliates for at least three of those days. This
included sending one Affiliate an email with the subject line ”Rain
Check” in response to five questions they sent about the election
process, and its contents indicated that the OSI would be
unavailable to answers questions about the election — until after the
election!
Seventh Irregularity (added 2025-03-13)
The OSI Election Team, less than 12 hours after sending out the ballots
(on Friday 2025-03-07) sent the following email. Many of the Affiliates told
me about the email, and it seems likely that all Affiliates received this
email within a short time after receiving their ballots (and a week before
the ballots were due):
Subject: OSI Elections: unsolicited emails
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2025 02:11:05 -0800
From: “Staffer REDACTED” <[email protected]>Dear REDACTED,
It has been brought to our attention that at least one candidate has
been emailing affiliates without their consent.We do not give out affiliate emails for candidate reachouts, and
understand that you did not consent to be spammed by candidates for this
election cycle.Candidates can engage with their fellow affiliates on our forums where
we provide community management and moderation support, and in other
public settings where our affiliates have opted to sign up and publicly
engage.Please email us directly for any ongoing questions or concerns.
Kind regards,
OSI Elections team
This email is problematic because candidates received no specific
guidance on this matter. No material presented at either of the
two mandatory election orientations (which I attended) indicated that
contacting your constituents directly was forbidden, nor could I find such
in any materials on the OSI website. Also, I checked with Richard Fontana,
who also attended these sessions, and he confirms I didn’t miss
anything.
It’s not spam to contact one’s “FOSS Neighbors” to
learn their concerns when in a political campaign for an
important position. In fact, during those same orientation sessions, it
was mentioned that Affiliate candidates should know the needs of their
constiuents — OSI’s Affiliates. I took that charge seriously, so I
invested 12-14 hours researching every single of my constituents (all ~76
OSI Affiliate Organizations). my research confirmed my hypothesis:
my constituents were my proverbial “FOSS
neighbors”. In fact, I found that I’d personally had
contact with most of the orgs since before OSI even had an Affiliate
program. For example, one of the now-Affiliates had contacted me way
back in 2013 to provide general advice and support about how to handle
fundraising and required nonprofit policies for their org. Three other
now-Affiliate’s Executive Directors are people I’ve communicated regularly
with for nearly 20 years. (There are other similar examples too). IOW, I
contacted my well-known neighbors to find out their concerns now that I was
running for an office that would represent them.
There were also some Affiliates that I didn’t know (or didn’t know well)
yet. For those, like any canvasing candidate, I knocked on their proverbial
front doors: I reviewed their websites, found the name of the obvious
decision maker, searched my email archives for contact info (and, in some
cases, just did usual guesses like <[email protected]>),
and contacted them. (BTW, I’ve done this since the 1990s in nonprofit work
when trying to reach someone at a fellow nonprofit to discuss any issue.)
All together, I was able to find a good contact at 55
of the Affiliates, and here’s a (redacted) sample of one the emails I sent:
Subject: Affiliate candidate for OSI Board of Directors available to answer any questions
REDACTED_FIRSTNAME,
I’m Bradley M. Kuhn and I’m running as an Affiliate candidate in the Open
Source Initiative Board elections that you’ll be voting in soon on behalf of
REDACTED_NAME_OF_ORG.I wanted to let you know about the Shared Platform for OSI Reform (that I’m
running for jointly with Richard Fontana) [0] and also offer some time to
discuss the platform and any other concerns you have as an OSI Affiliate that
you’d like me to address for you if elected.(Fontana and I kept our shared platform narrow so that we could be available
to work on other issues and concerns that our (different) constituencies
might have.)I look forward to hearing from you soon!
[0] https://codeberg.org/OSI-Reform-Platform/platform#readme
Note that Fontana is running as a Member candidate which has a separate
electorate and for different Board seats, so we are not running in
competition for the same seat.
(Since each one was edited manually for the given org, if the org primarily
existed for a FOSS project I used, I also told them how I used the project
myself, etc.)
Most importantly, though, election officials should never comment
on the permitted campaign methods of any candidates before voting
finishes in any event. While OSI staff may not have intended it,
editorializing regarding campaign strategies can influence an election, and
if you’re in charge of running an impartial collection, you have a high
standard to meet.
OSI: either reopen nominations or just forget the elections
Again, I call on OSI to correct these irregularities, briefly reopen
nominations, and extend the voting deadline. However, if OSI doesn’t want to
do that, there is another reasonable solution. As explained
in OSI’s by-laws
and elsewhere,
OSI’s Directors elections are purely advisory. Like most
nonprofits, the OSI is governed by a self-perpetuating (not an elected)
Board. I bet with all the talk of elections, you didn’t even
know that!
Frankly, I have no qualms with a nonprofit structure that includes a
self-perpetuating Board. While it’s not a democratic structure, a
self-perpetuating Board of principled Directors does solve the problems
created in a Member-based organization. In Member-based organizations,
votes are for sale. Any company with resources to buy Memberships for its
employees can easily dominate the election. While OSI probably has yet to
experience this problem, if OSI grows its Membership (as it seeks to),
OSI will sure face that problem. Self-perpetuating Boards aren’t
perfect, but they do prevent this problem.
Meanwhile, having now witnessed OSI’s nomination and the campaign process
from the inside, it really does seem to me that OSI doesn’t really take
this election all that seriously. And, OSI already has in mind the kinds
of candidates they want. For example, during one of the two nominee
orientation calls, a key person in the OSI Leadership said (regarding items
4
of Fontana’s
and my shared platform) [quote paraphrased from my memory]: If you
. I was
don’t want to agree to these things, then an OSI Directorship is not for
you and you should withdraw and seek a place to serve elsewhere
of course flabbergasted to be told that a desire to avoid proprietary
software should disqualify me (at least in view of the current OSI
leadership). But, that speaks to the fact that the OSI
doesn’t really want to have Board elections in the first place.
Indeed, based on that and many other things that the OSI leadership has
said during this process, it seems to me they’d actually rather hand-pick
Directors to serve than run a democratic process. There’s no shame
in a nonprofit that prefers a self-perpetuating Board; as I said,
most nonprofits are not Membership organizations nor allow any electorate
to fill Board seats.
Meanwhile, OSI’s halfway solution (i.e., a half-heartedly organized
election that isn’t really binding) seems designed to manufacture
consent. OSI’s Affiliates and paid individual Membership are given
the impression they have electoral power, but it’s an illusion.
Giving up on the whole illusion would be the most transparent choice for
OSI, and if the OSI would rather end these advisory elections and just
self-perpetuate, I’d support that decision.
Update on
2025-03-07: Chad
Whitacre, candidate in OSI’s “Member district”, has endorsed
my suggestion that OSI reopen nominations briefly for this election.
While I still urge voters in the “Member district” to rank my
running mate, Richard Fontana first in that race, I believe
Chad would be fine choice as your second listed candidate in the
rank choice voting.