O’Brien’s first job at OSI won’t be polishing the logo; it’ll be navigating a community still concerned over the group’s Open Source AI Definition and last year’s messy board election.
There’s a new person in charge at Open Source Initiative. On Wednesday the organization announced that Duane O’Brien will take the reins as OSI’s executive director. He takes over for Stefano Maffulli, who took the job in September 2021 and left last October. Since then, Deborah Bryant has been filling in as interim ED.
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.
“For years I’ve focused on helping companies become thoughtful partners with the communities they depend on — by supporting maintainers, investing in sustainability, and showing up with transparency and respect,” O’Brien said in a statement that was released today on OSI’s website. “The Open Source Initiative plays a critical role in the ecosystem by clarifying what open source means and safeguarding the principles that make collaboration possible. At a moment when open source is central to conversations about AI, cybersecurity and global technology policy, I’m honored to join OSI and look forward to working with the board, staff and community to meet the challenges ahead.”
So far O’Brien hasn’t given any indication concerning his thoughts on OSI’s Open Source AI Definition, which will likely define his tenure at OSI.
The definition, which purports to do the same for AI that the Open Source Definition did for software, has been controversial since its release was announced at 2024’s All Things Open conference. Many in the open source community, as well as many OSI members, are unhappy with the definition for not sticking to open source principles. That includes Bruce Perens, the author of the original Open Source Definition that used to define open source software. He’s said that just applying OSD to AI would be better than OSAID.
Pushback against OSAID came to a head early last year, when some OSI members labeled a board election unfair after several anti-OSAID candidates were disqualified, and questions were raised over the counting of the vote. Some think that the handling — or mishandling — of last year’s board election was ultimately behind Maffulli’s resignation.
Outgoing interim ED Bryant hasn’t yet announced her plans going forward. Before stepping in to temporarily fill Maffulli’s shoes, she spent more than three years as an OSI policy advisor.
“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,” she said in an exit post on OSI’s website. “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!”
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
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