We ❤️ Open Source
For over 26 years, the Open Source Definition, maintained by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), has fueled permissionless innovation and generated immense economic value. Open source software has opened new markets and allowed global communities to shape the direction of transformative technologies. A Harvard Business School study estimated open source software has a demand-side value of $8.8 trillion, underscoring its vast societal benefits.
I’ve been involved in open source for over a decade, having started the OpenStack project and later the OpenInfra Foundation. With members of our foundation in over 180 countries, I’ve seen firsthand how open source is the most efficient way to drive innovation while delivering economic opportunity to the widest number of people. There’s no question that AI is now redefining computing, with trillions of dollars in investment, and once again we have an opportunity to distribute the future more evenly by embracing open source principles.
This brings me to the Open Source AI Definition (OSAID), an effort organized by OSI over the past two years, which I have participated in alongside others from both traditional open source backgrounds and AI experts. It is often said that naming things is the hardest problem in software engineering, but in this case we started with a name, “Open Source AI,” and set out to define it. As it turns out, that’s just as hard. This difficult work can also appear contentious because people have strong opinions, but that’s nothing new for open source software (or people).
