Erstwhile Sun openista gets April Fool director job at OSI

Ex-Sun open source veteran Simon Phipps has been elected to the board of directors at the Open Source Initiative (OSI) group.

Phipps confirmed in a blog post today that he would start his new role on 1 April. On Monday he quit Oracle-owned Sun, where - prior to Larry Ellison's acquisition of the database firm - he had worked for nearly a decade.

His resignation marked the latest in a long line of big guns at Sun who have left the firm following Oracle's $7bn takeover.

"One or two friends have asked why on earth anyone would want to commit time to OSI," wrote Phipps.

"It has been criticised for allowing too many licences to be approved - including some of questionable merit. It’s easy to find people ready to criticise - some apparently just for the sake of it - and hard to find much more than grudging respect."

He went on to say that the organisation, under his directorship, would be overhauled to address some of the grumbles recently levelled at the OSI, which he said still had a "relevant role in the world of software freedom".

Phipps hopes to see the OSI shift from its current "supreme court" model to a member-based model.

"I’d like to see activities promoting open source around the world both encouraged and represented by OSI - education, policy development and perhaps organisational support for open source projects. And if there was any way at all to be a more uniting force - well, I can dream!" he said. ®