The Open Source Initiative Names Stefano Maffulli As Its First Executive Director (zdnet.com) 10
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has finally named its first Executive Director, Stefano Maffulli. ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reports: Maffulli is a long-time developer community manager. He co-founded and led the Italian chapter of Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) from 2001 to 2007. He also worked for the FreedomBox Foundation. This organization, led by Columbia law professor Eben Moglen, created an inexpensive open-source server for those who wanted to avoid proprietary internet and cloud services. From there, Maffulli moved to OpenStack, the open-source Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud, and other open-source projects.
He'll be taking over from Deb Nicholson, who served as the OSI's interim general manager. This key step in the move of the OSI OSI into a professionally managed organization. "Bringing Stefano Maffulli on board as OSI's first Executive Director is the culmination of a years-long march toward professionalization so that OSI can be a stronger and more responsive advocate for open source," says Joshua Simmons, the OSI board's chairperson. "We can now deprecate the role of President transitioning to Chair of the Board with confidence about OSI's future."
An enthusiastic open source user, Maffulli contributed documentation patches, translations and advocated for projects as diverse as GNU, QGIS, OpenStreetMap, and WordPress. He knows he'll face new, bigger challenges at the OSI. "Open source software is everywhere, but its definition is constantly being challenged," said Maffulli. "The zombies of shared source, limited-use, and proprietary software are emerging from the graves where we put them to rest in the 90s, threatening the whole ecosystem." The OSI has to keep up with these and many other changes. For example, there have been several failed efforts to force ethical rules into open-source licenses. To keep up with these whiplash fast advances, Maffulli said, "mobile devices, cloud, artificial intelligence/machine learning, and blockchain offer new opportunities for developers, entrepreneurs, and society as a whole who all deserve a strong OSI not only to maintain a definition of open source that works in modern settings but also forges a path for how to effectively produce modern open-source software."
He'll be taking over from Deb Nicholson, who served as the OSI's interim general manager. This key step in the move of the OSI OSI into a professionally managed organization. "Bringing Stefano Maffulli on board as OSI's first Executive Director is the culmination of a years-long march toward professionalization so that OSI can be a stronger and more responsive advocate for open source," says Joshua Simmons, the OSI board's chairperson. "We can now deprecate the role of President transitioning to Chair of the Board with confidence about OSI's future."
An enthusiastic open source user, Maffulli contributed documentation patches, translations and advocated for projects as diverse as GNU, QGIS, OpenStreetMap, and WordPress. He knows he'll face new, bigger challenges at the OSI. "Open source software is everywhere, but its definition is constantly being challenged," said Maffulli. "The zombies of shared source, limited-use, and proprietary software are emerging from the graves where we put them to rest in the 90s, threatening the whole ecosystem." The OSI has to keep up with these and many other changes. For example, there have been several failed efforts to force ethical rules into open-source licenses. To keep up with these whiplash fast advances, Maffulli said, "mobile devices, cloud, artificial intelligence/machine learning, and blockchain offer new opportunities for developers, entrepreneurs, and society as a whole who all deserve a strong OSI not only to maintain a definition of open source that works in modern settings but also forges a path for how to effectively produce modern open-source software."
Re: (Score:2)
Unlike XIDEN
Was that the main antagonist from Quake 3?
Re: (Score:3)
So he's basically a pencil pusher who has written no code in his life. Way to meet workplace diversity goals OSI!
Considering the present state of open-source documentation, they need all the "pencil-pushers" they can get.
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So he's basically a pencil pusher who has written no code in his life. Way to meet workplace diversity goals OSI!
Considering the present state of open-source documentation, they need all the "pencil-pushers" they can get.
What? You mean to say there's something wrong with Stack Overflow?
Cloud marketer. (Score:2)
A lot of what he does is marketing and pushing for ways to utilize cloud platforms. This is a very corporate friendly approach since you have to pay to use cloud platforms. I wouldn't be surprised if they begin moving all emphasis toward everything cloud. It seems like a step backwards as far as enabling people to control their software as you now rely on some corporate entity to allow you to access or manipulate your software. I hope I'm dead wrong but I do not believe his influence will be beneficial
disagree: we need non-corporate clouds (Score:2)
To the contrary, I think the situation is that the world is moving toward cloud-
Naughty economic model (Score:2)
My theory is that almost no one cares about this story because OSS uses bad economic models. But I don't even care enough to repeat my favorite solution approach. (It's about to expire with fewer than 10 comments. And few of those are barely relevant.)