Unique Challenges in Elected Governing Bodies for FOSS
UB5.230 | Day 1 | 17:00 - 18:00 | Speakers: Deb Bryant, Bradley M. Kühn, Richard Fontana, Joe Brockmeier, Ian Kelling
Abstract
FOSS communities have historically developed governance models that include within them biases and other problems, often belatedly recognized. For example, there is now general agreement that no dictator can be benevolent. Common alternatives to the "benevolent" dictator— the "meritocracy", "do-acracy", and the self-perpetuating committee — also have serious problems. Often the alternative offered to these kinds of governance systems is for some kind of elected governance body.
Democratic governance institutions are messy, however. We'll consider some historical examples of problems that have occurred in various democratic FOSS initiatives and organizations, and will focus particularly on the Open Source Initiative (OSI) board of directors elections of 2025. We'll consider the question: how can we design elected governance bodies for FOSS that truly represent the views of our community and are held properly accountable to their constituencies?
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier will moderate this panel, and additional individuals have been invited and will be added once they are confirmed.
Speakers
Bradley M. Kühn is the Policy Fellow and Hacker-in-Residence at Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC). Kühn began his work in the software freedom movement as a volunteer in 1992 — as an early adopter of Linux-based systems and contributor to various FOSS projects, including Perl. He worked during the 1990s as a system administrator and software developer for various companies, and taught AP Computer Science at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati. Kühn’s non-profit career began in 2000, when he was hired by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). As FSF’s Executive Director from 2001–2005, Kühn led FSF’s GPL enforcement, launched its Associate Member program, and invented the Affero GPL. Kühn began as SFC’s primary volunteer from 2006–2010, and became its first staff person in 2011. Kühn's work at SFC focuses on enforcement of the GPL agreements, FOSS licensing policy, and non-profit infrastructural solutions for FOSS. Kühn holds a summa cum laude B.S. in Computer Science from Loyola University in Maryland, and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Cincinnati. Kühn's Master's thesis discussed methods for dynamic interoperability of Free Software programming languages. Kühn received the Open Source Award in 2012, and the Award for the Advancement of Free Software in 2021 — both in recognition for his lifelong policy work on copyleft licensing and its enforcement.
Richard Fontana is a lawyer who has specialized in open source and free software legal issues for a surprisingly long time. He currently works at ~Red Hat~IBM supporting Red Hat.
Ian is President of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and works at FSF as a Senior Systems Administrator. He discovered free software while studying for his bachelor's degree in computer science in 2006. Early in his software career, he experienced working as a software developer for proprietary software companies, while using, learning, and contributing to GNU/Linux on his own time, which solidified his personal belief in complete software freedom. He started working at FSF in 2017, joined the FSF board in 2021, and became FSF president in 2025. He has contributed to pieces of free software like GNU Emacs, community efforts like the Free Software Directory and others, and has been a speaker at the Seattle GNU/Linux conference (SeaGL) and FOSDEM.
Some experiences which inform him as a speaker in the 2026 FOSDEM session "Unique Challenges in Elected Governing Bodies for FOSS": In his personal capacity, along with Aaron Wolf he coauthored the Petition to the Open Source Initiative: Publish the Full 2025 Election Results. From 2021 through 2025, he helped the FSF design and implement a formal, transparent process for identifying and appointing board members. He helped write Anchoring the FSF in its values, published in 2025. He has been involved with governance of various other groups including a small labor union, soccer teams, a roller derby team, online gaming groups, and small companies.
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