OSI Board of Directors

The Board of Directors of OSI consists of the following people (in alphabetical order of last name, except the OSI president is listed first):

Michael Tiemann - President

Michael Tiemann is a true open source software pioneer. He made his first major open source contribution over a decade ago by writing the GNU C++ compiler, the first native-code C++ compiler and debugger. His early work created world-leading technologies and also informed the first open source business model. In 1989, Tiemann's technical expertise and entreprenurial spirit led him to co-found Cygnus Solutions, the first company to provide commercial support for open source software. During his ten years at Cygnus, Tiemann contributed in a number of roles from President to hacker, helping to lead the company from a fledgling start-up to an admired open source leader. Tiemann is now Vice President of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat, a leading supplier of Linux and Open Source software. Tiemann also provides financial support to organizations that further the goals of software freedom, including the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the GNOME Foundation.

Ken Coar (PGP key)

Ken Coar is a director and Vice President of the Apache Software Foundation. He has over two decades of experience with network software and applications, system administration, system programming, process analysis, technical support, and computer security. Ken knows more than a dozen programming languages, but mostly writes in Perl, PHP, and C. He has worked with the World-Wide Web since 1992, been involved with Apache since 1996, and was a co-author of the CGI RFC. He is the author of Apache Server for Dummies and co-author of Apache Server Unleashed and Apache Cookbook. We has written articles for Linux Planet, Apache Today, Linux Magazine, and ACM Queue. He gives presentations around the world on Apache, open software, and distributed development. He somewhat spastically maintains a Web log, 'The Rodent's Burrow', at http://Ken.Coar.Org/burrow/.

Danese Cooper - Secretary and Treasurer

Danese Cooper has a 15-year history in the software industry and has long been an advocate for transparent development methodologies. Danese worked for six years at Sun Microsystems, Inc. on the inception and growth of the various open source projects sponsored by Sun (including OpenOffice.org, java.net and blogs.sun.com). She was Sun's Chief Open Source Evangelist and founded Sun's Open Source Programs Office. She has unique experience implementing open source projects from within a large proprietary company. She joined the OSI Board in December 2001 and currently serves as Secretary & Treasurer. As of March 2005 Danese has joined Intel to advise on open source projects, investment and support. She speaks internationally on Open Source and Licensing issues.

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh

Rishab sees his role on the OSI board not in advocacy, but in promoting unbiased, evidence-based research on the socio-economic, legal and technical aspects of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) worldwide. He is Founding International and Managing Editor of First Monday, the most widely read peer-reviewed on-line journal of the Internet. He is Programme Leader at MERIT/International Institute of Infonomics at the University of Maastricht, Netherlands, where he moved from Delhi, India in 2000. He coordinated the European Union -funded FLOSS project a comprehensive study of users and developers, and is actively involved in initiatives related to government policy on open source in Europe and Asia. He conducts research funded by the EU, the Dutch government and the US National Science Foundation.

Harshad Gune

Harshad Gune teaches computer science at the Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research (SICSR) in Pune, India. His primary experience with Open Source is as as educator. He has organized an annual FOSS conference, GNUnify since 2003 and helped promote FOSS technologies in India as well as support the FOSS community to grow stronger. The conference has grown to unite the FOSS community in India. As an active member of the Pune Linux Users Group (PLUG), Harshad has worked with others to educate students with FOSS software on computers, and has helped the industry learn more about the power of Linux through participation in IT trade shows and holding workshops.

Martin Michlmayr

Martin Michlmayr has been involved in various open source software projects for well over 10 years. He used to be the Volunteer Coordinator for the GNUstep Project, acted as Publicity Director for Linux International and served as the leader of the Debian project. In the two years as the leader of Debian, Martin represented the project and performed important organizational and coordination tasks within the project. Martin works for HP as an Open Source Community Expert and acts as the community manager of FOSSBazaar. Martin holds Master degrees in Philosophy, Psychology and Software Engineering, and earned a PhD from the University of Cambridge.

Russell Nelson (PGP key)

Russell Nelson has been giving away his software since he started writing it in 1974. Prior to his GPLed Freemacs package, there weren't many people to distribute it to. He really came to the fore with his Packet Driver Collection, begun while a staff member at Clarkson University. A GPLed set of DOS Ethernet drivers, they arguably put GPL'ed software on more CPUs than anything prior to Linux. McDonalds uses them in their cash registers, so they're literally a world-wide phenomenon. Supporting free software full-time since 1991, Russell lives and works at home in Potsdam, NY, where he's trying to figure out how to share his 384Kbps connection with his neighbors wirelessly

Nnenna Nwakanma

Nnenna Nwakanma holds a triple Bachelors, in the Social Sciences, History and English and a Masters degree in International Relations and Law. She has done large-scale work within International development organisations and institutions in Africa on Information, Documentation and International Relations. Among them, The Home Health Education Service, The Helen Keller Foundation and The African Development Bank. Co-founder of different pan-African organizations: The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), The Africa Network of Information Society Actors (ANISA), and the Africa Civil Society for the Information Society (ACSIS). One of the major Civil Society Actors in the World Summit on the Information Society, she represents the African Civil Society on the Digital Solidarity Fund, and advises on the Africa Information Society Initiative. Today she is Council Chair of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa, and also runs her own Platform of Development Consultants - nnenna.org

Alolita Sharma

Alolita Sharma has been involved with open source since the early days of Linux. She has actively promoted open source software adoption in industry, government and developing economies for the past 12 years, working with leaders in US and India's IT industry, government and education to enable change and transparency. She believes that the ideas of open source can generate unbounded opportunity for the development of technology and economic prosperity in developing nations. She is co-founder of Technetra and has over 15 years in the industry. She serves on the board of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and is member of the advisory board of Twincling technology foundation. She co-created India's first open source business conference LinuxAsia, to serve as a platform for global industry leaders to interact with India's open source players from industry, government, academia and community. She speaks internationally on open source trends, technologies and building successful communities. Her publications include a chapter on Open Source in India in Open Sources 2.0, a regular column on trends in Linux For You and open source technology reviews in Linux Journal. She holds a Bachelors degree with honors in Computer Science from George Mason University and a Masters degree with honors in Computer Science from George Washington University where she also pursued doctoral studies.

Bruno Souza

Bruno is President of SouJava, Brazil's largest JUG, were he has led the group's Javali Project, an ambitious umbrella project that hosts 10 large open source projects. Javali, that includes a project to create an Open Source Java Runtime, is targeted to bring software development into Brazil's open source discussions. Bruno also co-authored the SouJava's Open Source Manifest that discussed Open Source and Open Standards as the way to correctly apply and succeed with Open Source in Brazil. The document was later used as basis for the open source initiatives of one of Brazil's largest development agency, and positivelly influenced the adoption of open source in Brazil. Bruno is a member of the Management Board of java.net, one of the largest open source hosting sites for Java developers, is an activist for the creation of open source, compatible implementation of Java Standards, and an active participant in several Java open source projects.

You can send mail to the OSI board at osi at opensource.org.

OSI Board Observers

Bdale Garbee

As HP's Open Source & Linux Chief Technologist, Bdale Garbee advises the lead technologists in other HP business units and other HP decision makers on technology and community aspects of Linux and Open Source applications. He mentors internal communities on how to productively participate in the Open Source development process, and encourages the adoption of Open Source software and principles across the company. A contributor to the Free Software community for more than 25 years, Bdale's background also includes many years of hardware design, Unix internals, and embedded systems work. He was an early participant in the Debian project, helped port Debian GNU/Linux to 5 architectures, served as Debian Project Leader, is chairman of the Debian Technical Committee, and remains active in the Debian community. Bdale serves as President of Software in the Public Interest, is on the board of directors of the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum and Open Media Now, and is a member of the Linux Journal Editorial Advisory Board. He is a frequent speaker at Linux and Open Source conferences, and works closely with various projects in the Open Source community.

Zak Greant

Zak Greant is a Free Software and Open Source advocate and strategist. He has been a board observer since January of 2008 and serves as the OSI's manager of IT services. In addition to his work at the OSI, he is a Mozilla Foundation staff member, a Free Software Foundation license compliance team member, serves as the president of several consulting firms and participates on several advisory boards.

Andrew Oliver

Andrew C. Oliver is a professional cat herder who moonlights as a software developer. He's been developing in Java since 1998, primarily as a consultant for large companies with the inevitable dot-com thrown in between. He is a former member of the Apache Software Foundation, former member of the Apache Jakarta PMC, and founder of the Jakarta POI project. When he's not off globetrotting to provide training, consulting and support to JBoss, Inc. customers, you can find him bit-twiddling with some obscure file format or protocol, or JBoss Mail Server. Andy resides in Durham, NC with his wife and two stepsons. In his spare time he reads Churchill, other biographies and histories, goes to plays with his wife, plays with his kids, goofs in his blog, and plays Vega Strike.

Ernest Prabhakar

Though trained as a physicist, Dr. Ernest Prabhakar has been working with UNIX and Open Source software for over twenty years. He started on BSD 4.2 at Project Athena while getting his S.B. in Physics at MIT, and used a NeXT Cube for his Ph.D. thesis in Experimental Particle Physics at Caltech. After a brief stint in management consulting with the Boston Consulting Group, he came to Apple in 1997 with the vision of combining the Power of Unix with the Simplicity of Macintosh. He was a key player in the first release of Mac OS X Server and Darwin, Apple's Open Source operating system based on BSD technology. He is currently UNIX Product Manager on the Mac OS X team, where he is responsible for marketing Open Source, Open Standards, and Xgrid. Current research interests include Multicore computing, Syndication Oriented Architectures, and Language-Oriented Programming with Ruby.

OSI Counsel

Mark Radcliffe - General Counsel

Mark Radcliffe is a partner with DLA Piper and he is resident in the firm's Silicon Valley office. He focuses on representing clients in intellectual property and finance matters. He has extensive experience helping companies identify, protect and exploit their IP, and he has worked with U.S.-based clients and large international companies. In 1997, the National Law Journal named Mr. Radcliffe one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in the United States. In 1998, Harvard Law School designated him a "Distinguished Alumni." Mr. Radcliffe was named in the International Whos Who of e-Commerce Lawyers (2nd Edition). He has spoken at major conferences and industry presentations, including OSBC and OSCON, about open source and other intellectual property issues. He earned a B.S. in Chemistry, magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1981.

OSI Staff

Steve Mallett - Webmaster

Steve Mallett volunteers as the OSI "webmaster". He is the Founder and Managing Editor of Open Source Directory (OSDir.com), and proprietor of (the) inevitable corp.. The web design for opensource.org comes from the creative folks at TemplateMonster.com, and is a derivative work of Drupal's SpreadFirefox theme.

Board Emeriti

Eric S. Raymond - Founder & President Emeritus (PGP key)

Eric designed the language and marketing tactics around which the OSI was formed. He and Bruce Perens co-founded the organization. Eric lives in Malvern, Pennsylvania, USA.

Bruce Perens

Ian Murdock

Tim Sailer

Chip Salzenberg

Brian Behlendorf

L. Peter Deutsch

Guido van Rossum

Chris DiBona

Joichi Ito

Sanjiva Weerawarana

Matt Asay

Raj Mathur

Counsel Emeriti

Larry Rosen

Larry served for many years as general counsel and secretary. He educated us on many issues of trademark, copyright, patent, and contract law.

Laura Majerus

Laura Majerus worked at Fenwick & West when she was counsel for OSI. She is now an in-house lawyer at Google.