Petition to the Open Source Initiative: Publish the Full 2025 Election Results
46 comments
·April 25, 2025tedivm
olalonde
Where are you seeing that? I just read the definition and it doesn't seem to a allow closed components:
> An Open Source AI is an AI system made available under terms and in a way that grant the freedoms to:
> Use the system for any purpose and without having to ask for permission.
> Study how the system works and inspect its components.
> Modify the system for any purpose, including to change its output.
> Share the system for others to use with or without modifications, for any purpose.
tedivm
They allow a major component of the model, the data, to be withheld.
redwood
To be explicit I believe your concern is the fact that they are not requiring that the training data and training methodology they used to generate the open source model be made accessible so that anyone can essentially build the model themselves from raw ingredients right? In other words imagining for a moment that folks have access to the kind of compute necessary to do that. Right?
Nevertheless giving people a building block that they can do what they want with certainly seems like free as in freedom to me. So I personally sympathize with the OSI approach but in general I'm not a big on the zealotry around the open source community.
It's almost like we have a third category here: free as in freedom but you can't necessarily rebuild it yourself.
In practice I would argue that intellectual talent has always been a hidden part of this anyway and therefore we're being intellectually dishonest to imply that this hasn't always been a de facto reality even for traditional software.
remon
Honest question; what does OSI actually do? I am involved with a number of OS projects and not once has OSI come up in any context, be it compliance, governance, education and so on.
fermigier
Start with https://opensource.org/about
In more concrete terms: they're the stewards of the Open Source Definition (OSD), which is a rather explicit, but still subject to interpretation, list of criteria to decide if a particular software license is, or is not, "really Open Source". This is very important in the context of "Open Source washing" that is still a thing, and was even more important a decade or two ago, when there was a Cambrian explosion of licenses which claimed to be Open Source.
ajb
They own the trademark of "Open Source" and use it to exercise a right to define which licences are truly open source. Now, I guess they are becoming involved in the question of what it means for an AI model to be open source, hence the politicking
Previously, if your project used one of the main OS licences you were good as far as they were concerned. They mainly existed to avoid lawyers coming up with licenses that water down the rights an open source license provides.
gonzo
The OSI emphatically does NOT:
own the trademark of “Open Source”.
They tried, and the USPTO denied their application for same. As such they have any such right to exercise.
They own a trademark for “Open Source Initiative”, and attempt to persuade the public that they alone define the term “Open Source”.
ajb
Woops, my apologies for spreading misinformation. I genuinely thought they had the trademark, but it's confirmed that they don't: https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...
Nevertheless, their Open Source Definition is reasonably respected
hiatus
This is trivial to look up. They do not in fact own the trademark "open source". Apparently I can't share a direct link to uspto search results, but you can search by owner and see they have 7 trademarks, none of which are for the term "open source".
thomascountz
They own the trademark "Open Souce Initiative," which they say you can use with no advanced written permission if you follow all specific guidelines, including:
> the use of the term “Open Source” is used solely in reference to software distributed under OSI Approved Licenses. [1]
So you can refer to any software as "Open Source," regardless of their definition. But, if you call a piece of software "Open Source" alongside the use of the Open Source Initiative's trademark, then you must also use their definition of "Open Source," unless you otherwise have written permission.
nottorp
> They own the trademark of "Open Source"
So every time I talk about open source I'm a dirty trademark infringer and IP pirate?
ternaryoperator
They do not own the Open Source trademark. They tried to trademark "open source", but the USPTO denied the application. Since then, they've worked at convincing the public that OSS means anything with a license approved by the OSI. This too is not so. For example, SQLite, arguably the most successful OSS tool ever built, is not covered by an OSI license and doesn't intend to be.
CamperBob2
In their view, yes, if you don't conform to their prescriptivist take on the subject.
The fact that they have fooled so many people into thinking they own a trademark on a generic phrase is, however, pretty impressive.
tokai
They undermine the Free Software movement with a more corporate and permissive bend. Its a yellow union for software freedom.
gonzo
[flagged]
dec0dedab0de
They review licenses, and act as a sort of PR team for the Free Software movement. The whole point is to make Free Software not seem too scary to businesses.
johannes1234321
In that context it is important to differentiate Free from Open Source software.
The OSI is specifically built with a different vision from the FSF.
Free software, shall always be free, with almsource and ideally all derived works.
Open Source wants the code to be spread and for that allows inclusion with commercial software. (i.e. Microsoft was able to take open source TCP/IP stacks from BSD (BSD License) and integrate with Windows 95. That wouldn't have worked with a GPL Free Software implementation. (Even LGPL)
The supporting argument there is: By allowing that Microsoft's implementation was fully compatible to the rest of the world instead of having "bugs" (purposely?) in their own implementation, which would limit interoperability.
The free software argument is that they now took the code and closed it, not giving users a freedom to review (verify) and fix themselves. Which allowed Windows to play in TCP world instead of being an outsider.
Tomte
Free Software nd Open Source Software are the same.
You're thinking of copyleft licenses, not Free Software.
g0db1t
If so, I think they made their point alr? I mean, this list is completly riddled to the brim with companies that use open-source! https://www.apache.org/foundation/sponsors
arp242
As far as I know: basically just write blog posts.
If they do anything more than that, then I've not seen it.
nilamo
The Office of Special Intelligence protects the world from dangers we would rather pretend didn't exist.
mouse_
They're Microsoft's controlled opposition team designed to confuse legislation and sentiment surrounding free software
lolinder
As a reminder, the OSI was formed as a corporate-friendly foil to Stallman's FSF. This is how the OSI once described its own history on its website:
> The conferees decided it was time to dump the moralizing and confrontational attitude that had been associated with "free software" in the past and sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape. They brainstormed about tactics and a new label. "Open source", contributed by Chris Peterson, was the best thing they came up with.
Given that the OSI exists to water down a distinctly moral framework like Free Software into a version that is less "moralizing" and "confrontational" so as to be more appealing to corporations, the path that Open Source has taken over the last few years is hardly surprising.
I've become convinced that the cure for what has been ailing us in the FOSS movement is going to come only as we buck the corporate elements and return to something more closely resembling the original Free Software ethics-based movement. The GPL and AGPL are some of the only licenses not to get totally sucked up in corporate interests, and that's not a coincidence: they were founded on the deeply and sincerely held principle that it is an ethical imperative to advance the good of software's individual human users.
[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20071115150105/https://opensource...
bsnnkv
> The GPL and AGPL are some of the only licenses not to get totally sucked up in corporate interests
Neither of these licenses address the gigantic "internal use" loophole
FSF is also just as dogmatic as OSI in it's refusal to distinguish corporations from individuals
pasc1878
As all is based on copyright you can't distinguish between individuals and organisations as the law does not.
rcxdude
You can write whatever you want in a license, though. I don't see any issue with writing a license which says 'this may only be used by an individual, not an organisation', though of course there are likely to be significant grey areas which would need to be resolved in court if it came to that.
bsnnkv
I guess I must have imagined all the licenses which treat individual and corporate use as distinct.
Edit: I'll simplify the above to "the statement in the parent comment is demonstrably not true"
lolinder
I don't think you need to distinguish individuals from corporations in order to advance human freedom. You can make the licenses such that any corporation that uses them to provide services to users must provide the users with required freedoms. If businesses can make money while respecting those terms, all the better!
The same goes for the internal use loophole: the corporation should be required to provide its internal users with certain freedoms, and if they do that then mission accomplished.
bsnnkv
"The purpose of a system is what it does"
tokai
It would have made for a better discussion if you had stated openly that you are into some fringe self-made anti-org software license. That would have made it clear what you actually want to discuss.
bsnnkv
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
pabs3
Is there a license that does address that loophole?
amszmidt
Such a license would be a non-free software / not open source license.
bsnnkv
There are many - but FSF, OSI and their proponents typically advocate quite strongly against their use.
richardfontana
Maybe the Apple Public Source License v1? Haven't looked at it in a long time.
null
The Open Source AI Definition (OSAID) is a slap in the face to anyone who has been part of the open source community. Allowing companies to redefine "Open" to allow closed components is a complete betrayal of everything the OSI should stand for, and it was done purely so large companies can pretend their closed models are open.