Faces of Open Source

During our first class, we touched upon a few of the most influential figures within the open source community. The person that my teammate and I researched was Karen Sandler, the Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to ethical technology. Previously, she served as the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation (2011–2014), where she led key initiatives like the Women’s Outreach Program. It was very interesting to learn how she shifted from a legal career to one focused on ethical technology.

Takeaways from Nick Vidal from OSI

The second class this week, we also had the opportunity to hear from Nick Vidal of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) about the Open Source AI Definition. His presentation deepened my understanding of what it truly means for AI to be open source—not just making code available, but ensuring transparency across multiple dimensions:

• Data Information: Clear documentation on training data, provenance, and selection methods.
• Code: Complete source code for training and running the model.
• Parameters: Model weights, configurations, and tuning details.

A key takeaway that I personally had was that all these elements must be available under OSI-approved licenses for an AI system to be genuinely open source. Otherwise, it risks falling into the category of “openwashing”—where companies misleadingly brand AI models as open source while keeping crucial components proprietary. It was a very information and eye-opening look into Open Source AI. I personally it quite thought-provoking how rigid Nick’s definition of open-source is. A project has to be considered open-source in every facet; otherwise it is not open-source.

Open Source in Finance + Final Thoughts

I always thought of finance as this super closed-off industry where firms kept everything locked down, building their own proprietary tools and refusing to share due to security and regulatory concerns. However, seeing how FINOS and open collaboration in finance are gaining traction made me realize that more institutions are starting to see the value in shared industry standards. Open-source projects in finance don’t just streamline processes—they allow firms to collaborate while still customizing where it matters. This week really changed how I see open source evolving across industries—it’s not just about code, but about redefining how entire fields work together.