A year of tremendous progress
| Website | Membership | Newsletter |
|---|---|---|
| 🌎 +3M visitors / year (~50% increase YoY) | ❤️ ~5000 members (~80% increase YoY) | ✉️ ~15000 subscribers (~50% increase YoY) |
| Blog posts | Events | Talks | Townhalls |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📝 100+ | 🎟️ 25+ | 🎤 20+ | 💻 20+ |
The year of 2024 was a busy one for the Open Source Initiative (OSI) as we marched toward the release of version 1.0 of the Open Source AI Definition (OSAID) to ensure that AI systems are innovative and aligned with the foundational principles of Open Source. Our work has revolved around 3 grand areas: licensing and legal, policy and standards, and research and outreach. As the steward of the Open Source Definition, license and legal have been part of our core program since the very beginning of our foundation. We serve as an anchor for open community consensus on what constitutes Open Source. We protect the Open Source principles, enforcing the marks “Certified Open Source” and “Open Source Approved License”. Under policy and standards, we have monitored policy and standards setting organizations, supporting legislators and policy makers educating them about the Open Source ecosystem, its role in innovation and its value for an open future. Lastly, under research and outreach, we are leading global conversations with non-profits, developers and lawyers to improve the understanding of Open Source principles and practice. OSI investigates the impacts of ongoing debates around Open Source, from artificial intelligence to cybersecurity.
Licensing and legal
OSI Approved Licenses
We provide a venue for the community to discuss Open Source licenses and we maintain the OSI Approved Licenses database.
Highlights:
- Enriched License Pages: Added relevant metadata to each license. Developing commenting tool.
- Assured Completeness: Reviewed archives to assure the list of licenses is complete.
- New Review Process: Simplified and clarified the workflow for new and legacy licenses.
- Started Thorough Review: Analyzing licenses for incoherent approvals adding new categorization.
- Approved New Licenses: Added three new licenses and one superseded.
- Published a DOSP paper: Published a whitepaper on the Delayed Open Source Publication practice.
ClearlyDefined
We aim to crowdsource a global database of licensing metadata for every software component ever published for the benefit of all.
Highlights:
- Version 2.0 released: We launched ClearlyDefined v2.0, a major milestone in improving license data quality
- New documentation website: We unveiled a new website featuring comprehensive documentation and resources.
- Open Governance: We elected leaders to the Steering and Outreach Committees.
- Support for LicenseRef: By integrating support for LicenseRefs, we expanded beyond the SPDX License list.
- Harvester for Conda: We introduced a new harvester for Conda with a focus on ML and data science packages.
- Integration with GUAC: GUAC users now have access to enriched data for compliance and security.
Policy and standards
Open Policy Alliance
We are bringing non-profit organizations together to participate in educating and informing public policy decisions related to Open Source software, content, research, and education.
OSI Policy and Standards
As the importance of Open Source grows, so has our support for legislators and policy makers educating them about the Open Source ecosystem, its role in innovation and its value for an open future.
Highlights:
- Digital Public Goods Alliance: Continuing work in AI Community of Practice in support of UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
- Engaging Open Policy Alliance: Collectively responding to agency requests for public input on Security and AI Models.
- Standardisation with Open Source in mind: Bridging standard makers, legislators and developers so new standards are free for the community to implement.
- Cyber Resilience & AI Acts in Europe: Educating regulators to implement the Cyber Resilience & AI acts with Open Source in mind.
- Securing Open Source Software: Educating policy makers in Washington DC, invited to workshops with federal agencies.
- Joining the Eclipse Open Regulatory Compliance group: Supporting lawmakers in making the law, and Open Source developers in complying with it.
Research and outreach
Open Source AI Definition
We are bringing together global experts to establish a shared set of principles that can recreate the permissionless, pragmatic and simplified collaboration for AI builders.
Highlights:
- 8 Drafts + 1.0 version: We finalized the drafting process and published OSAID v. 1.0 in October 2024.
- Presence in 23 events: Met Open Source and AI experts, developers, lawyers, and policy makers.
- Global events: Representation in North America, Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia.
- 50+ co-designers: Experts and builders joined the process, providing feedback and validation.
- 20+ townhalls: Transparent reporting and engagement with public meetings every other week.
- 13 systems reviewed: Initial validation of the Open Source AI Definition on existing AI systems.
Opensource.net
The Opensource.net platform supports healthy dialog and informed education on Open Source software topics.
Highlights:
- Practical Open Source: We had a new edition of our Practical Open Source blog series, with 10 articles.
- Panel at All Things Open: We hosted a panel to discuss doing Business with Open Source at All Things Open in Raleigh, NC.
- Readership growth: In the last year we had ~90k pageviews, from 66k unique users.
- Global audience: Most visitors come from United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada and France.
- Community resource: Our articles got featured in community hubs such as Hacker News and Reddit.
- First anniversary: We celebrated our first year online with over 80 posts published. Submit yours!
Press mentions
Our work was cited over 180 times in the press worldwide, educating and countering misinformation. Our work was featured at The New York Times, The Verge, TechCrunch, ZDNET, InfoWorld, Ars Technica, IEEE Spectrum, MIT Technology Review, among other top media outlets.
Events
Throughout 2024, OSI actively participated in 25 conferences from around the world to engage with diverse communities. Highlights include FOSDEM (February – Brussels), Columbia Convening on openness and AI (February – New York), Open Source Summit NA (April, Seattle), PyCon (May – Pittsburgh), AI_Dev Europe (June, 2024 – Paris), OSPOs for Good (July, 2024 – New York), KubeCon + AI_dev Hong Kong (August – Hong Kong), Open Source Congress (August – Beijing), Deep Learning Indaba (September – Dakar), India FOSS (September – Bengaluru), Open Source Summit Europe (September – Vienna), Nerdearla (September – Buenos Aires), Training Data in OSAI (October – Paris) and All Things Open (October – Raleigh). A full timeline of in-person and online events is available here.
Financials
Consolidated Financials ($ in thousands)
Period: 2023-2024
| 2024 | 2023 | |||
| REVENUE | ||||
| Sponsorships | $520 | $353 | ||
| Contributions | $227 | $139 | ||
| Membership Dues | $26 | $23 | ||
| Grants | $249 | $0 | ||
| Event Revenue | $33 | $244 | ||
| Other Revenue | $36 | $17 | ||
| Total Revenue | $1,091 | $776 | ||
| EXPENSE | ||||
| Staffing | $202 | $205 | ||
| Event Expense | $76 | $33 | ||
| Information Technology Expenses | $37 | $14 | ||
| Insurance | $12 | $13 | ||
| Legal & Professional Fees | $473 | $287 | ||
| Marketing and Promotion | $62 | $69 | ||
| Travel Expense | $152 | $49 | ||
| Office & Other Expenses | $21 | $16 | ||
| Total Expense | $1,035 | $686 | ||
| NET INCOME | $56 | $90 |
| ASSETS | ||||
| Cash and Cash Equivalents | $970 | $896 | ||
| Accounts Receivable – Net | $68 | $69 | ||
| Other Current Assets | $0 | $0 | ||
| Total Assets | $1,038 | $965 | ||
| LIABILITIES AND NET ASSETS | ||||
| LIABILITIES | ||||
| Accounts Payable and Other Liabilities | $29 | $5 | ||
| Deferred Revenue | ||||
| Loan – SBA | $141 | $145 | ||
| Total Liabilities | $170 | $150 | ||
| NET ASSETS | ||||
| Net Assets Without Donor Restrictions | $594 | $562 | ||
| Net Assets With Donor Restrictions | $274 | $253 | ||
| Total Net Assets | $868 | $815 | ||
| Total Liabilities and Net Assets | $1,038 | $965 | ||
Program expenses
Membership trends
Asset trends
Toward 2025
Our mission is to educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open source community. In 2024, thanks to the commitment and donations from several individuals and organizations, we made substantial progress towards our mission. We hope to continue to evolve our programs in 2025, embracing the new challenges and opportunities ahead, from Artificial Intelligence to cybersecurity. Please consider joining the OSI as an individual member and/or as a sponsor or affiliate.