Why Openness Matters More Than Ever

Members Newsletter – August 2026

Dear OSI community,

I know it seems like it’s all any of us are hearing about lately, but I need a minute to talk about Open Source and AI.

Every model making headlines today, open or closed, sits on top of Open Source code, runs on Open Source infrastructure, and is based on openly shared research. That’s not sentiment, it’s just the history of how we got here. None of this exists without the Open Source community. So when I read that Washington is weighing trade block-lists and executive orders aimed at Open Weights and Open Source AI, I don’t read it as a technology story. I read it as a question about whether the commons this community built is going to be treated as a powerful strength we need to protect, or a potential threat we need to deter.

We’ve spent this year making the case that it’s the former, in our comments to the White House, in our work with the G7 on its Vision on AI Openness, and in conversations with our global community. The argument isn’t complicated: openness doesn’t check passports, restricting American access to Open Weights and Open Source AI doesn’t make them disappear, it just makes us less able to study and secure the ones the rest of the world keeps using. And the people who’d pay for that mistake first aren’t the big labs in the headlines, they’re the startups and small teams who rely on being able to see, modify, and run what they depend on.

I wrote more about this in a blog post recently, as did our Open Source AI fellow Gabriel Toscano. As a member of this community, the OSI will keep fighting to defend Open Source. If you’re weighing in on this debate yourself, or just want to talk it through, my office hours are always open.

Warm regards,

Duane O’Brien

Executive Director, OSI

News from the OSI

Openness Made All of This Possible

Every AI system in the headlines today, whether proprietary or Open Source, exists because researchers shared their work openly. That openly shared research produced Open Source software: the frameworks used to train these models, the libraries used to evaluate them, the operating systems, orchestration layers, and inference engines used to run them.

Other highlights

Podcast and video

Understanding Open Source Law and AI Impacts in Modern Software Development (Carlo Piana)
POSAIS 2026 – Round Table : “Open Models, Trusted AI: How Open Source Changes the Research Game” (Gaël Blondele)

OSI in the news

Open weights vs. closed: An AI civil war’s afoot, and the stakes are existential (ZDNet)
‘Open-Washing’ Is Everywhere in AI. Four Criteria Cut Through It (Tech Policy Press)
G7 releases vision paper on openness in AI (Open Source Observatory)

News from OSI affiliates and community

Research and white papers

Open Source AI

Europe and Open Source AI: Beyond Licenses (AI and Society Institute)
The state of open source AI (Mozilla)
Unpacking Open Source Artificial Intelligence: Toward a Framework for Openness in Foundation Models (Communications of the ACM)
A Sovereign, Open-Source Foundation Model for German and English (Soofi)
Perspectives for Open Source AI: Regulatory approaches of the EU, U.S., and China (i-lex – Journal of Law, Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence)
The Open-Source Advantage in Large Language Models (AI and Ethics)
Innovation Accelerator or “Venus Flytrap” Strategy? The Antitrust Perspective on Open Source AI Regulation (International Journal of Digital Law and Governance)
Open-source AI 101: the battle for the future of AI (Deutsche Bank Research Institute)

Open Source Software

Open practices across science, software, education and other domains (Nature Human Behaviour)
Advancing Digital Government through Open Source Indicators (Journal of Systems and Software)
Open Source Software: Security Principles and Practices (CISA)
What comes after FOSS? (Leiden University / Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund)

Dashboards

AI Potluck (Current AI)
LicenseAtlas (Moming Duan)
License Review Tracker (Moming Duan)
Artifacts Hub (Interconnects)
Adoption Dashboard (Interconnects)

Events

Upcoming events

Open Source Congress and Stakeholder Day (September 22-23, Halifax)
Open Source Summit Europe (October 7-9, Prague)
All Things Open (October 18-20, Raleigh)
Open Technology Research Symposium (October 26-27, Barcelona)
Mozilla Festival (October 28-30, Barcelona)

Check the top 50+ Open Source conferences of 2026 that the OSI is tracking, including events that intersect with AI, cloud, cybersecurity, and policy.

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