OSI pauses 2026 board election cycle

Date:
Wed, 28 Jan 2026 18:13:39 +0000

Description:
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has announced that it will not be holding
the 2026 spring board election. Instead,
it will be creating a working group to " review and improve OSI's
board member selection process " and provide recommendations by
September2026: The public election process was designed to gather community priorities and improve board member selection, while final
appointments remained with the board. Over time, that nuance has become a source of understandable
confusion for community members. Many reasonably expected elections to
function as elections normally do, and in fact, the board has
generally adopted the electorate's recommendations. When a process
feels unclear, trust suffers. When trust suffers, engagement becomes
harder. This is especially problematic for an organization whose
mission depends on legitimacy and credibility. [...] OSI tried its experiment for the right reasons, but a variety of
factors resulted in "elections" that are performatively democratic
while being gameable and representative of only a small group, and
we've learned from the results. Now we are making space to align our
director selection process with our bylaws, to rebuild trust, and to
develop better, more durable and truly representative participation in
which the global stakeholder community can be heard. LWN covered the
previous OSI election in March 2025.

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Link to news story:
https://lwn.net/Articles/1056376/


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