About
Ruth Suehle is director of the open source program at SAS, where she is building the analytics company’s open source program office. She began her career in web development, then spent 15 years at Red Hat as editor of Red Hat Magazine, on opensource.com, and then as one of the first employees in the OSPO, eventually leading its community leadership team.
Her work at Red Hat included writing their Open Source Participation Guidelines, which cover licensing and legal matters, how to participate in communities, and an “upstream first” approach.
She has keynoted/spoken on community building, open hardware/makers, and the history of open source. She is co-author of Raspberry Pi Hacks (O’Reilly, Dec. 2013).
Ruth is president of the Apache Software Foundation, served as executive vice-president, and has produced its conference since 2018. Ruth has served on the O3DF board and TSC, the Open@RIT advisory board, and co-founded the Open Source SIG in the International Game Developers Association.
Current employer
SAS
Other affiliations
TODO group member
What areas of the Board’s work do you see yourself contributing towards?
First, it is important to me that as an affiliate representative, that I am, in fact, representing on behalf of the more than 85 OSI affiliates and not only for the ASF. For the last 25+ years, the open source ecosystem has been able to succeed with many independent foundations and organizations that communicated infrequently with one another. But it is becoming increasingly useful and important for us to do what we do best—collaborate—not only within our organizations, but with one another. Networking OSI affiliates into common communications around our common needs and goals is a great potential piece of that.
One of the reasons that inter-organizational collaboration has become increasingly important is the rapidly changing state of regulation and policy around the world related to software development. I was delighted to see the OSI create the Open Policy Alliance in 2023 and all of its work since then. I have supported it in the past few months by helping the OSI with its search and interview process in hiring a US policy manager and as a conference speaker on OSI-led policy panels, and I look forward to continuing to support the OSI’s policy work and inter-organizational collaboration through a director role.
In a broader sense, the board’s basic duty is oversight and high-level strategy. My wide experience across a variety of parts of the open source ecosystem and with foundations (both software and otherwise) make me well-suited to supporting the OSI board functions.
What goals do you hope to achieve for OSI and the world of open source by serving on the Board of Directors?
The OSI has served an important role since 1998 advocating for open source software and the Open Source Definition. After significant initial attention in the early years, the open source development model went largely ignored by the rest of the world for two decades while it quietly came to be the critical underpinning of all modern software development. Although the term “open source” has from time to time been used incorrectly, it is now far from being ignored, not only by individuals and corporate contributors, but also by global regulators. As a result, we are seeing some who want to use the term to their advantage without their work being in line with the OSD. That means that the OSI’s ongoing work on behalf of the OSD and as a thought leader in open source is more important now than it has ever been.
As for my personal contribution to the board, I believe organizations of all types benefit from an equilibrium of experienced members and new ones for the different perspectives they each provide. Those with long tenure provide important institutional knowledge and context, while fresh perspectives help look at things in ways that those who have long been close to the organization inevitably lose. Although I would be a newcomer to OSI’s board, I am certainly not a newcomer to the organization in general. I hope to provide some of that fresh perspective as a largely external observer in the past, balanced by the insights of board members with long OSI experience.
Previous board service
- O3DF governing board and TSC
- Open@RIT advisory board
- LANFest board and secretary
Main social media account or blog
https://bsky.app/profile/suehle.bsky.social
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