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The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a California public benefit corporation, with 501©3 tax-exempt status, founded in 1998.

It is involved in Open Source community-building, education, and public advocacy to promote awareness and the importance of non-proprietary software. OSI Board members frequently travel the world to attend Open Source conferences and events, meet with open source developers and users, and to discuss with executives from the public and private sectors about how Open Source technologies, licenses, and models of development can provide economic and strategic advantages.¹⁾

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a Non-Profit Organization (NPO) corporation with global scope formed to educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open-source community.

Open source enables a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of the process. The promise of open source is higher quality, better reliability, greater flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.

One of our most important activities is as a standards body, maintaining the Open Source Definition for the good of the community. The Open Source Initiative Approved License trademark and program creates a nexus of trust around which developers, users, corporations, and governments can organize open-source cooperation.²⁾

There are currently just under 100 licenses approved by the OSI. However, there is a subset which are popular, widely used, or have strong communities:

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