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Duane O’Brien Takes OSI’s Hot Seat
Quoting: Duane O’Brien Takes OSI’s Hot Seat - FOSS Force —
OSI performs an important role within the loosely organized open source community, and is considered to be the ultimate arbiter when it comes to deciding what constitutes — or doesn’t constitute — open source, based on the Open Source Definition developed in the 1990s by Bruce Perens, one of the organization’s founders. While there’s nothing to legally keep anybody from pasting an “open source” label on any software license, it’s generally accepted that until a license is approved by OSI, it’s not open source.
O’Brien will be the organization’s second permanent executive director. Before Maffulli, OSI had a general manager who was responsible for day-to-day office management duties, with the board president taking on the executive responsibilities.
The new guy brings to the table many years’ experience in open source, both in open source foundations and nonprofits such as Open Source Collective and OpenSSF, and in business. For the latter, he spent 2 1/2 years as Capital One’s collaborative engineering lead, where his duties included overseeing the company’s open source program office. Before that, he spent about 3 1/2 years in various open source positions at PayPal, and more than five years at Indeed.com as the head — and then director — of open source.
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Welcoming the New Executive Director! - Open Source Initiative
Many of you may already know Duane. For those who have not yet had the pleasure, Duane is a long-time Open Source leader with nearly 25 years of experience as a technologist, community advocate and strategist. It’s been a pleasure to have personally worked with Duane and to have directly witnessed his engagement, contribution and support for so many aspects of the Open Source ecosystem over the past decade. I am both grateful and excited to leave OSI’s future in his hands.
It’s been a privilege to have served as OSI’s interim ED over the past six months and to have worked with its team of gifted Open Source professionals. Many thanks to the team for the time together, and thanks to the many stakeholders who lent support through the leadership transition time. The best of OSI is yet to come!
Welcoming Duane O’Brien as Executive Director of the Open Source Initiative - Open Source Initiative
This is a critical moment for the Open Source Initiative. As Open Source continues to shape global technology, policy, and digital infrastructure, the need for clear stewardship and strong leadership has only grown. On behalf of the Board of Directors, I’m thrilled to welcome Duane O’Brien as OSI’s new Executive Director.
Duane brings a distinctive combination of experience and perspective to this role. He’s shown a heightened ability to recognize where the Open Source ecosystem is headed and to bring people together to respond in practical ways. That work happens in the day-to-day reality of maintainers, foundations, and organizations as they navigate complex questions about how Open Source is sustained and governed.
Open Source Initiative Appoints Duane O’Brien as Executive Director - Open Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative (OSI), globally recognized as the steward of the Open Source Definition, today announced the appointment of Duane O’Brien as its new executive director.
O’Brien is a long-time Open Source leader with nearly 25 years of experience as a technologist, community advocate and strategist. He most recently led Collaborative Engineering at Capital One, where he oversaw the company’s Open Source Program Office, InnerSource initiatives, and standards for programming language adoption and implementation. Prior to that, he built and led the Open Source Program Office at Indeed and directed Open Source programs and operations at PayPal.
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Hello From The New Executive Director - Open Source Initiative
When I was saying goodbye to my last team, one of the final things I said to them was “Leading this organization has been the honor of my career.”
I should have added “so far.”
I am grateful for the trust the board has placed in me, and I’m honored to be entrusted to lead the important work of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) as our new Executive Director. It is no small thing to take the helm of one of the most enduring nonprofits at the center of the Open Source ecosystem. Especially now, as we all experience tremendous change in the global technology ecosystem.
The OSI’s historic stewardship of the Open Source Definition has been vital to getting us all to where we are today. We have held the torch for what it means for code to be licensed as Open Source. Because we all have a shared understanding of what this means, the users of Open Source software have been able to spend less time trying to understand their rights to the software and instead focus on creating common solutions to shared problems.