Repeated Mistakes Lead to Unfair OSI Elections

I recently announced that I was nominated for the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Board of Directors as an “Affiliate” candidate. Many irregularities have already occurred in this election cycle and I must urgently draw everyone's attention to them. And, to be sure I'm not misquoted: no, I don't think the election is “rigged”. Every problem described herein can easily be attributed human error, and, as such, I don't think anyone at OSI has made an intentional plan to make the elections unfair. Nevertheless, these mistakes and irregularities (particularly the second one below) have led to an unfair 2025 OSI Directors Election. I call on the OSI to reopen the nominations for a few days, correct these problems, and then extend the voting time accordingly.

(Recap on) First Irregularity

The first irregularity was the miscommunication about the nomination deadline (as covered the press. Instead of using the time zone of OSI's legal home (in California, or the standard FOSS community deadline of AoE (anywhere on earth) time), OSI surreptitiously chose UTC and failed to communicate that decision properly. According to my sources, only one email of 3(+) emails about the elections included the fully qualified datetime of the deadline. Everywhere else (including everywhere on OSI's website) published only the date, not the time. It was reasonable for nominators to assume the deadline was US/Pacific — particularly since the nomination form still worked after 23:59 UTC passed.

Second Irregularity

Due to that first irregularity, this second (and most egregious) irregularity is compounded even further. All year long, the OSI has communicated that, for 2025, elections are for two “Member” seats and one “Affiliate” seat. Only today (already 70% through the election cycle) did OSI (silently) correct this error. This change was made well after nominations had closed (in every TZ). By itself, the change in available seats after nominations closed makes the 2025 OSI elections unfair. Here's why: the Members and the Affiliates are two entirely different sets of electorates. Many candidates made complicated decisions about which seats to run for based on the number of seats available in each class. OSI is aware of that, too, because (a) we told them that during candidate orientation, and (b) Luke said so publicly in their blog post (and OSI directly responded to Luke in the press).

If we had known there were two Affiliate seats and just one Member seat, Debian (an OSI Affiliate) would have nominated Luke a week early to the Affiliate seat. Instead, Debian's leadership, Luke, Fontana, and I had a complex discussion in the final week of nominations on how best to run as a “ticket of three”. In that discussion, Debian leadership decided to nominate no one (instead of nominating Luke) precisely because I was already nominated on a platform that Debian supported, and Debian chose not to run a candidate against me for the (at the time, purported) one Affiliate seat available.

But this irregularity didn't just impact Debian, Fontana, Luke, and me. I was nominated by four different Affiliates. My primary pitch to ask them to nominate me was that there was just one Affiliate seat available. Thus, I told them, if they nominated someone else, that candidate