Open Source Initiative

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is an American nonprofit organization that maintains The Open Source Definition, the predominant standard for open-source software. It was founded in February 1998 by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond, part of a group inspired by the Netscape Communications Corporation publishing the source code of its flagship Netscape Communicator product, and in August 1998 it added a board of directors. For most of its existence its activities have centered on the definition and on certifying software licenses as compliant with it. It began with a closed organizational model and started to switch toward a membership organization in the 2010s to raise more money and expand its activities.