To promote and protect open source...

As a global non-profit, The Open Source Initiative (OSI) protects and promotes open source software, development and communities, championing software freedom in society through education, collaboration, and infrastructure, stewarding the Open Source Definition (OSD), and preventing abuse of the ideals and ethos inherent to the open source movement. See our about and history pages for more.

Open source software is software that can be freely used, changed, and shared (in modified or unmodified form) by anyone. Open source software is made by many people, and distributed under licenses that comply with the Open Source Definition.

News

OpenSummit: Open Source Software in—and for—Open Education

Openness has become the new standard for content and software across a variety of initiatives in higher education. The success of open source software on campuses, and the same ethos which fosters its development, is also found in open education, open educational resources, open access publishing, open analytics, open data, open science, and open humanities. These open initiatives have matured to challenge, even dominate, the global educational landscape.

Open Source and Crowdsourcing Are Not Synonyms

OSI Board alumnus Simon Phipps recently provided some clarification to FastCo.Design around common misunderstandings related to "sourcing". We've seen more and more of these, although most often--like this example--innocent enough. However, these do provide great opportunities to remind the public about what open source actually is, and why it is so valuable.

SysArmy Joins OSI Affiliate Member Program

New affiliate membership highlights diverse communities of interest supporting open source software beyond programmers.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI), the steward of the Open Source Definition (or OSD), is announcing the affiliate membership of SysArmy. SysArmy, a community of system administrators and IT professionals from Argentina, was founded to provide, "support for those who give support."

Using Open Source Software, Powering Potential and the Raspberry Pi Foundation Bring Technology to Schools in Tanzania

Thanks to open source, Powering Potential and the Raspberry Pi Foundation are able to bring computers and a library of digital education content to rural schools in the East African nation of Tanzania.