The ATS Group and a Large MSP

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/the-ats-group-and-a-large-msp/29857/

One of the most critical clients of our Premium Partners at the ATS Group is a large MSP that acts as a service and administration platform for their own clients, providing them with hardware, software, engineers, support staff, metrics, and reporting.

The challenge

The MSP needed a stable, high-performance platform monitoring solution that would cover all the services they provided. They didn’t have the capabilities or budget to run multiple monitoring solutions – a single, flexible solution that could track every service was paramount, as was the ability to react to anomalies before they became serious problems.

After an initial trial with a different monitoring solution that was notable for poor service, a lack of integrations, no community, and almost no documentation, they took a closer look at Zabbix, thanks in large part to our focus on preventative action and automation.

The solution

Because of their focus on performance-based monitoring, the client went with a “hot-cold” architecture and an integration with Ansible EDA, which stands for Event-Driven Ansible. It turned out to be a true “force multiplier”, as using Zabbix, Ansible, and EDA together allowed the MSP to monitor their systems, automate tasks based on real-time events, and provide immediate responses to issues without manual intervention.

The integration was designed to sort issues by whether or not they were able to be automated. If an issue arose that required human intervention, alerts could be sent to ServiceNow via multiple channels. If human intervention was unnecessary, the issue was rerouted to Event-Driven Ansible, which runs automation on all monitored hosts.

For example, with the joint Zabbix/Ansible solution, a slash admin backstage management system filling up at 2AM because of an overflowing log file for some script is no longer an urgent issue. If there are multiple gigabytes of room in the volume group, Zabbix can tell Ansible it’s a problem. Ansible can then increase the file system by 25% and send a message letting the engineers know in the morning that they took action on their behalf.

The results

With essentially no software costs and an automation integration that can find issues and fix them independently, the MSP was able to rapidly achieve a much higher service-to-spend ratio than they’d ever imagined possible.

There has been a noted increase in employee satisfaction as well – thanks to automation, engineers no longer have to be “on call” at all hours to solve simple issues, while C-level executives have seen productivity skyrocket thanks to the joint solution’s ability to find potential issues before they become real problems.

In conclusion

At Zabbix, we work hard to stay on the forefront of automation. That means constantly improving our own product while also staying on top of new technologies like Event-Driven Ansible in order to better integrate with them. To learn more about what Zabbix can do for MSPs, visit us here.

The post The ATS Group and a Large MSP appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

I Signed an OSI Board Agreement in Anticipation of Election Results

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

Update 2025-07-06 I urge you
to sign
the petition asking OSI to release the 2025 election results —
which Open Source Initiative continues to withhold.

Update 2025-03-21: During the 2025 Open Source Initiative
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.

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. I emailed it to OSI
instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but
I refuse
to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and
ethical grounds0 (see my two keynotes
(FOSDEM
2019, FOSDEM
2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info
on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement
with OSI before the deadline as well.

0
Chad Whitacre
has made
unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the
(apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to
his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome
using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I’ve put it in this
footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this
blog post’s primary content, but instead attempting
to reopen
the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform.
My response follows:

In addition to
the two keynotes
mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to
this situation:

  • Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they
    would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board
    meetings. It’s easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and
    that way, we know you’re on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some
    candidates for open Board seats retort that’s not environmentally sound,
    and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the
    car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to
    simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it
    might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director
    candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
  • Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all
    paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from
    freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say
    — and it’s easier to read what’s printed because of its quality.
    Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board
    members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer
    recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don’t insist that
    other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are
    seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do
    two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine
    with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when
    they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral
    issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
  • Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must
    work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they’ll get
    delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it
    reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that
    the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or
    should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all,
    the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn’t go so far as to
    demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then
    say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more
    than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

The collective thoughts of the interwebz