Mission

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a non-profit corporation with global scope formed to educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open source community.

Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.

One of our most important activities is as a standards body, maintaining the Open Source Definition for the good of the community. The Open Source Initiative Approved License trademark and program creates a nexus of trust around which developers, users, corporations and governments can organize open source cooperation.



OSI Governance Reform

The OSI Board is in the process of progressing governance reform to transform OSI into a member-based organisation.

March 30, 2012: New Affiliates: OSI is very pleased to welcome CENATIC and Debian to the Affiliate scheme for community groups. Read more...

March 19, 2012: New Directors Deb Bryant, Luis Villa and Mike Milinkovic join the OSI Board. Read more...

February 6, 2012: OSI director Simon Phipps announced details of the launch of a new Affiliates scheme for open source groups in a keynote at FOSDEM in Brussels. He also announced the OSI survey (see below) and the launch of an initiative to create a Body of Knowledge for open source. Read more...



Recent Activities

March 30, 2012: OSI now has a Google+ page. If you use Google+, please add it to one of your circles to stay up-to-date with our news.

January 18, 2012: The Open Source Initiative Board joined many other civil society organisations as co-signatories of this open letter expressing concern about SOPA and PIPA. Read more...

January 9, 2012: OSI recently approved the new Mozilla Public License version 2, which may prove significant for the open source community.