• Description
• Mission
• Communications
• Resources
• Deliverables

Start date: January 2015

Working Group Chair: Patrick Masson

Working Group Sponsor: Patrick Masson

OSI General Manager: Patrick Masson

Initial members: Patrick Masson

Description

After the various issues with crowd funding campaigns misleading the public related to open source software (think, Anonabox and Jolla Tablet), a small/simple survey was undertaken on December 2014. The survey queried Kickstarter & Indiegogo on 12/20/2014...

...and found 85 projects asking for support in the development of "open source" or "open source software."

The total fund raising goal for all 85 projects is $5,086,090, the total committed was $6,664,242.

Of these 85 projects, 46 carried OSI approved licenses and 39 carried either none, or some other license (e.g. CC-BY-SA)--one even was proprietary. 

These 39 open washing / fauxpen projects were seeking $2,397,050 and raised, $2,967,167 from almost 30,000 contributors (file attached).

I think there is a role for the OSI here.

First, we should contact Kickstarter, Indiegogo and other crowd-funding sites to help them develop policy around claims of funding for open source projects. This would be a similar effort to working with GitHub on their open source licensing issues. Of course, this implies we should suggest to them a policy on what we believe to be best practices (can we do this?).

Secondly, I think the OSI should reach out to the tech media (letters to editors pointing to a site explaining the issue and suggested approaches) to help them understand the importance of fact checking before promoting these projects. I'll add that just today, the Jolla Tablet and fauxpen SailfishOS was highlighted as how open source projects can succeed in crowd-funding efforts (Slide 3 at http://www.networkworld.com/article/2865755/opensource-subnet/why-crowdfunding-open-source-projects-isnt-as-easy-as-you-think.html ).

Third, we should promote this activity within the open source communtiy as it highlights the OSI's value in promoting and protecting open source software licensing and develop it. It will also provide us with evidence of practice in explaining our own value proposition--think next year's Annual Report.

I, as an individual, was going to do take this on with a follow up to the open-washing article in opensource.com. But I think it would be much more powerful--and rightly positioned--as an OSI effort.

Comments?
Patrick

Mission

The working group will work with crowd-funding sites to raise awareness, develop policy and instill good practice to address, the ambiguity in, or mis-representation of projects seeking funding for projects promoted as open source software.

The working group will also reach out to the technology media (letters to editors, comments to articles, original posts, etc.) explaining the issue and suggested approaches to help the press and general public understand the importance of and assess authenticity before promoting projects.

The working group will promote this activity within the open source community as it highlights the OSI's value in promoting and protecting open source software licensing and development.

Communications

The group will primarily communicate via the working group wiki page and related discussion forum.

If you have questions about the group, please contact Patrick Masson, the working group chair and sponsor.

Resources

• Use of the OSI wiki to document our work and communicate through development.
• Communications through OSI channels (press releases, blog posts, tweets, etc.) related to the working group's activities.

Deliverables

1. Press release explaining the OSI sponsored initiative.
2. Open letters to the media requesting increased fact checking and suggestions for referencing open source software projects.
3. Recommendations for crowd-funding sites for the assessment of projects they host that invoke "open source," "open source software" and related terms. (e.g. "[project name] is an open source project released under the [license name]")
4. Agreements with multiple crowd-funding sites to develop policy and good practice when invoking "open source," "open source software" and related terms in the projects they host.
5. Reference materials for those interested in supporting projects through crowd-funding to assess the authenticity of claims. (e.g. "Open-by-rule Benchmark, OSS Watch, Openness Index, etc.)