Slashdot Mirror

Coining the term "Open Source" was only the beginning. "That same month, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) was founded as a general educational and advocacy organization to raise awareness and adoption for the superiority of an open development process." That's the word from their newly-re-designed site OpenSource.net, which is now commemorating the 20th anniversary of the open source movement with an interactive timeline of milestones -- and announcements about much more.

• "Celebrations will be held worldwide, in conjunction with the leading open source conferences, as well as standalone community-led events... Our anniversary website will support volunteer organizers to host events in their own cities. The OSI will provide small grants to these community-led events and promote them to the broader community." (There are already several t-shirt designs...)

• A "Share Your Story" section explains that "As part of our mission, we want to promote the success stories of companies like yours that are investing in open source software and community in order to increase adoption and development even more broadly... We'll be sharing your stories with the community throughout the 2018 celebration. We'll also connect you with media outlets to share your story and participate in interviews."

• And going forward, OpenSource.Net "will serve both as a community of practice and a mentorship program. The goal is to further promote adoption of open source software over the next twenty years as issues shift from open source's viability/value to issues around implementation and authentic participation. OpenSource.Net connects those that "get it" and "did it" with a global network of highly qualified peers across industries. Your experiences as an exemplar in the community will help others address common (or unique) issue.

The anniversary is also being celebrated at this year's FOSDEM conference in Brussels, Belgium. "When it was inaugurated in 2000, FOSDEM, standing for Free and Open Source Developer's European Meeting, started out as OSDEM," remembers the site i-Programmer.

"But the F was added before its second event in 2002 in response to a request from Richard Stallman."

SETIGuy writes "Former WikiLeaks programmer Daniel Domscheit-Berg sabotaged WikiLeaks in a manner that threatens the anonymity of leakers, according to a WikiLeaks spokesperson. Since leaving WikiLeaks, Domschiet-Berg has become one of the cofounders of OpenLeaks. This raises the question: if you had material to leak, would you trust it to someone who has already jeopardized the anonymity of leakers at a site where he worked?" Domscheit-Berg denies claims by WikiLeaks that he damaged the organization or 'stole' material, but did say he took roughly 300,000 documents with him when he left. An anonymous reader notes related news that WikiLeaks is attempting to get around donation blocks by selling a line of T-shirts.