Open Source Development Lab looking for board member suggestions

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Author: JT Smith

By Grant Gross

The Board of Directors at the Open Source Development Lab, a computing resource center for data-center and telecommunications improvements to Linux, will soon select two members of the Linux community to serve on the board, and they’re looking for suggestions from community members.

Filling those two spots during 2001 were Tim O’Reilly of computer book publisher O’Reilly and Associates and Larry Augustin of software and Web site company VA Software. (VA is NewsForge’s corporate parent). Those two can serve more terms on the board, but OSDL also wants to hear who the Linux community would like to see serve on the board.

If you’ve got some ideas, let OSDL know right away. The board is meeting Jan. 17 to appoint the community-at-large members. Submit suggestions to feedback@osdl.org, and you can also post suggestions at the end of this story. According to an OSDL press release, your input will be presented to the board and be a “primary consideration” in the election of the 2002 community-at-large directors.

Explains Tim Witham, lab director: “The community board members are an important part of the OSDL’s governing structure, as they are intended to help the

OSDL ensure that the development community’s needs are a primary consideration in the day-to-day operation of the lab.”

State law on non-profit organizations requires the Oregon-based OSDL’s board of directors to choose the community-at-large directors, instead of a more democratic means, according to officials there. But the suggestion process from the community gives the corporate-dominated board a different view. The eight-member board has six directors who come from corporations that fund the OSDL.

While the open suggestion process last year gave OSDL staff “all kinds of flames and all kinds of people we’d never heard of,” joked a lab spokesman, O’Reilly and Augustin were also popular nominations from the community.

The OSDL has several active projects at the moment. In October, the facility announced testing for the GNU Bayonne telecommunications application server project. That same month, OSDL added the Scalable Test Platform to its services.

Category:

  • Open Source