Patrick Masson (@massonpj) is currently serving as the General Manager for the Open Source Initiative after working within higher education IT for over twenty years, ranging in roles from Programmer Analyst at UCLA, to Chief Technology Officer in the University of Massachusetts' Office of the President.Patrick also teaches within the College of Computing and Information at the State University of New York at Albany on subjects related to open source software.Patrick has worked to promote the awareness and adoption of open source throughout his career, serving on the Jasig Foundation's Board of Directors, and is currently on the Apereo Foundation's Advisory Council. He is the co-founder and current chair of the EDUCAUSE Constituency Group on Openness and author of the Openness Index.
Authored Comments
Mark,
Thanks so much for mentioning the OSI's work related to FLOSS foundations and United States (IRS) tax law.
For others who may not know, the OSI has established a working group called, The FLOSS Entities Incubator Project, which explores how the IRS position toward FLOSS organizations has changed, how these changes affect new and existing FLOSS non-profits, and what alternatives to independent tax-exempt status are available to new projects. It project collects and shares informational materials (like those mentioned in the article from the OpenStack Foundation) and recommends advocacy initiatives to address this issue.
More on OSI's Entities Working Group, can be found here: http://wiki.opensource.org/bin/Projects/entities-wg
Thanks so much,
Patrick
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General Manager & Director,
Open Source Initiative
I would offer, an OSI Membership (https://opensource.org/members), or a membership in one of our hard working Affiliates (https://opensource.org/affiliates/list), would be an excellent gift for the open source advocate on your list.
Of course, there are many many other fine free and open source projects, who are not yet OSI members, who could use your support.