As Michael pointed out, the OSI is not your father’s style of corporation.

I noticed that the OSI continues to describe itself as “a California public benefit corporation” and solicit donations and therefore continues to conduct business as a corporation in California, despite the suspension.

Perhaps I misunderstood the meaning of the term “The business loses its rights, powers, and privileges to conduct business in California”. If you have any insight into how the OSI can continue to operate “business us usual” without being in breach of California state law, I would be happy to update the Q&A accordingly.

Matt

-t

I can not be certain but I suspect that the OSI was suspended quite a few months ago and in response to a complaint that I filed with the state attorney general office.

I had had an unpleasant interaction with the OSI – one that startled me and offended me. I thought to look deeper into the organization and in particular to examine its sources of funding and its use of funds. With the help of a couple of “internet friends” on Bruce Perens’ former blog, “technocrat”, I discovered that OSI had (per the public record, at least) failed to file federal tax forms (form 990) for several years running. I also noticed what seemed to my amateur eyes like oddities in how they had spent money, at least as far as one could tell from published board meeting minutes. I also noticed what to my eyes were some inappropriate comments on the board’s blog. I reported these facts to the state A.G. office. Not much later, OSI became a suspended corporation.

Per (wise) policy the A.G. office will not discuss matters with me unless I want to add to my complaint – they protect the “innocent until proved guilty”. Bless them.

And I wish to be very clear that, although it seems the several years of missing tax forms is not in dispute, my additional suspicions about how they spent their money are purely speculation and should not be taken as anything more than part of my own personal motivation for talking to the A.G. Nobody should assume based only my word that OSI has done anything more wrong than missing a few filing deadlines. Clear?

As far as I can tell, the OSI board has several really wonderful, proactive, smart, social benefit do-gooders. I do not wish to impugn the board or the organization. Yes, I do have some strong differences with a couple of the board members. Yes, I do have some suspicions about their history as a fiduciary – but for now that’s between me, the A.G. office, and OSI. It’s not something I want other people to start believing only because “Tom says….”.

Regards,
-t

Bob

Thanks for your comment. We appreciate that this is not a simple situation and would agree that in many ways “open source” is no more or less protected legally than it was before, however the OSI does hold significant influence given the respect in which it is held, so it is the detriment of everyone that it cannot function properly. Here’s hoping for a swift resolution.

Perhaps it’s time for the “open sourcers” to start focusing more on the freedom that made what they do (did?) possible. That would be a good thing if they did that. This is the real selling point of Free Software–because in the arena of Freedom, the Microsofts of the world can’t even compete at all, no matter how “open” they pretend to be when it’s convenient for them. One example is that MS-PL license that apparently meets “open source” standards, but it sure ain’t Free Software. GNU/Linux was scaring the daylights out of Microsoft long before the term “open source” got invented (Halloween Documents went public in 1997, a year before “open source”).

Oh, but what about “alienating” business? Puh-leeze. Too many companies are making too much money with Free Software (e. g. Red Hat). It comes down to actually having a decent business plan, and if you don’t have one, you’re going to be toast no matter what field you’re in. On the contrary to alienation, Free Software is a very good way to help *save* your business, because of its overall cost-effectiveness.

–TP