Board - Annotated

OSI Board of Directors

The Board of Directors of OSI consists of the following people
(in no particular order, except the board 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 the CTO
of Red Hat, a leading supplier of Linux and Open Source software. In addition to his responsibilities at Red Hat, Tiemann serves on a number of boards, including the Open Source Initiative, the Embedded Linux Consortium, the Jabber Technical Advisory Board, the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board, and the Board of Directors of ActiveState Tool Corp. 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 ArsDigita Foundation.

Danese Cooper - Secretary/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.

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

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, is a
member of the Association for Computing Machinery, and is involved in the
project to develop Internet RFCs for CGI. He is the author of 'Apache Server
for Dummies' and co-author of 'Apache Server Unleashed' and 'Apache
Cookbook'. 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/.

Bruno Souza

A senior consultant at Summa Technologies, Bruno helps large
companies to successful use and develop open source products
and projects. 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.

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.

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 Indian IT, 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, trade and economic prosperity in developing nations. She is co-founder of Technetra and has over 15 years in the industry. She has held engineering and management positions at IBM, MCI Worldcom, Intelsat and SWIFT. As an industry consultant to US government agencies, global telecommunications and banking organizations, she has developed and managed projects to migrate large legacy applications to LAMP based web infrastructures. She received her MS in Computer Science from George Washington University, Washington DC where she also pursued doctoral studies. 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 has published widely and spoken at international conferences on open source trends and technologies. Publications include a chapter on open source in India in "Open Sources 2.0" published by O'Reilly and a regular column in Linux For You magazine.

Matt Asay

Raj Mathur

Raj Mathur is one of the earliest users and advocates of Linux and Free Software in India. He sold the first ever copy of Linux in India circa 1994, and was one of the founders of the Delhi Chapter of the India Linux Users Group. Raj is currently running his own Linux and Free Software consulting business, Kandalaya, and is the president of ILUG-Delhi, manager of the Linux-India web sites and mailing lists and on the panel for the Free Software Award Committee. He has also contributed to the FLOSS corpus with numerous packages released under the GNU GPL.

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 Initiatiave. Today she is Council Chair of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa.

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

OSI Staff

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.

Steve Mallett volunteers as the OSI "webmaster". He is the Founder and Managing Editor of Open Source Directory (OSDir.com), and partner in Gigantic Labs. 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

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 - Director of Legal Affairs

Laura Majerus is a partner in the intellectual property group of
Fenwick & West LLP in Mountain View, California. She was a
computer programmer before going to law school and has been
counseling clients in the intellectual property area for over
seventeen years. She specializes in the fields of patent law and
open source licensing. She received her B.S. in computer science
from the University of Iowa in 1979 and her M.S. in computer
science from the University of Iowa in 1987. She received her J.D.
with distinction from the University of Iowa in 1987. Ms. Majerus
is admitted to practice in Iowa, the District of Columbia, and
California. She has written and lectured widely in the
intellectual property and open source areas.