The Open Source Initiative was founded in late February 1998 — shortly after the foresight-open-source-meeting-1998 where the term "open source" was coined — by eric-raymond and bruce-perens. The date given here (1998-02-01) is approximate; the OSI's own documentation notes a founding in late February 1998. The OSI was incorporated in California as a non-profit organization.
Context and Motivation
The founding followed directly from the strategy discussions triggered by netscape-source-release-1998. Raymond and Perens recognized that "open source" as a term needed an institutional home: a body that could maintain a definition, certify licenses, and speak to business and press audiences in a way that the free-software-foundation — with its explicitly ethical and political framing — could not effectively do.
The split was partly strategic and partly philosophical. Perens had drafted the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) while at debian-project, establishing the criteria that debian-project used to evaluate whether software was free enough to include. He recognized that the DFSG could serve as the basis for a broader definition.
The Open Source Definition
The open-source-definition was adapted directly from the DFSG by bruce-perens for use by the OSI. The ten criteria cover: free redistribution; source code availability; derived works; integrity of author's source code; no discrimination against persons or groups; no discrimination against fields of endeavor; distribution of license; license must not be specific to a product; license must not restrict other software; license must be technology-neutral.
The OSI's primary function is license certification: it reviews submitted licenses against the Open Source Definition and certifies those that qualify as "OSI-approved." This certification matters to organizations that have policies about using open source software — it provides a clear standard independent of any particular license. The OSI's license list has grown substantially; license proliferation became a recognized problem and the OSI has at various points declined to certify licenses it considered redundant.
Institutional Role and Limitations
The OSI has operated with limited staff and resources relative to its significance. Its primary contributions have been:
1. Maintaining the open-source-definition as a stable standard 2. License certification and the approved license list 3. Advocacy to business and government audiences 4. Commentary on contested licensing questions (notably refusing to certify the SSPL in the modern-foss-and-sustainability-crisis-2015-present era)
The OSI's authority is reputational rather than legal: it has no enforcement power, and organizations can and do use licenses the OSI has not certified while describing their software as "open source." The FSF maintains its own list of free software licenses, which partially overlaps with the OSI list but differs in some cases (notably the Apache License 2.0, which OSI certifies and the FSF considers free but GPL-incompatible in some versions).
The Raymond-Stallman Tension
The OSI's founding represented eric-raymond's most direct institutionalization of the pragmatic, business-oriented open source framing against richard-stallman's ethical free software position. Raymond and Stallman have maintained a decades-long public disagreement about the proper framing: Raymond argues that emphasizing user freedom alienates business allies needed to advance the practical goal of more open source software; Stallman argues that the practical goal is meaningless without the ethical principle, and that "open source" allows businesses to extract benefit from the movement without accepting its values.
The OSI and FSF coexist with different missions, different license lists, and different relationships to the corporate sector. Both are part of the open-source-schism-and-dotcom-1998-2004 era's institutional legacy.