New leadership for the Open Source Initiative
Plus: Spiral secures backing for 'Data 3.0,' Google unveils Agent Payments Protocol, & more
Hi folks,
The headline this week is at the Open Source Initiative, which has launched a search for a new executive director as Stefano Maffulli’s four-year term comes to a close.
Elsewhere, Spiral emerged with $22 million in funding for a new database architecture, while Google unveiled the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), an open standard to let AI agents handle transactions across platforms. In Europe, meanwhile, Austria’s armed forces announced plans to swap Microsoft Office for LibreOffice.
Plus more…
As usual, feel free to reach out to me with any questions, tips, or suggestions: forkable[at]pm.me.
Paul
Open issue
An open door at the OSI
After four years in the hotseat, Stefano Maffulli is leaving his role as executive director of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).
The OSI, a nonprofit watchdog and so-called “stewards” of the Open Source Definition (and, more recently, the Open Source AI Definition), is now beginning the search for its next leader to guide the organization into a new phase.
The OSI appointed Maffulli as its first executive director back in 2021, a move that professionalized the group’s operations, expanded staff capacity, and positioned it at the center of key debates over licensing, governance, and the future of open source in an AI-driven world.
In a companion blog post, Maffulli reflected on his term, highlighting both the progress made and the unfinished work of ensuring that open source continues to evolve in response to emerging technologies.
“When I became OSI’s first executive director in 2021, some people thought OSI’s work was done — the Open Source Definition had ‘won,’ embraced even by organizations that once resisted it,” Maffulli wrote.” Our list of OSI-approved licenses was stable. In their eyes, there was nothing left to do. I didn’t see it that way. Technology was (and still is) evolving in ways that test how we apply the Open Source Definition in practice.”
Looking back, he cast OSI’s recent efforts — from shaping an Open Source AI definition to expanding its community presence — as just the beginning of a longer journey.
“We can’t treat the Open Source Definition as a relic,” he continued. “To keep open source alive and relevant, we have to keep changing.”
Read more: OSI press release
Patch notes
Spiral launches with $22 million
Spiral recently emerged with $22 million in seed and Series A funding, for a database built for “machine consumers,” pairing its Vortex columnar format (donated to the Linux Foundation) with an object-store-native design aimed at fast scans, random reads, and direct S3→GPU decoding.
The pitch: current lakehouse stacks starve AI hardware and complicate governance; Spiral claims big gains while keeping security primitives first-class — a story with clear implications for open source data tooling and formats.
Read more: Spiral blog
Google proposes open payments spec for agents
Google introduced the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), designed as an open standard for letting AI agents handle payments securely across platforms. Early backers include major tech and financial firms such as American Express and PayPal, signaling momentum for an interoperable baseline with room for open source implementations.
Read more: Google blog
“Cap’n Web” takes RPC to JavaScript
Cap’n Web, a new protocol from Cloudflare, adapts the Cap’n Proto data format into an open source remote procedure call (RPC) system for JavaScript. RPC is a way for programs to talk to each other across networks as if they were calling local functions.
Read more: Cloudflare blog
GitHub tightens npm supply chain
GitHub announced a new roadmap to harden npm, the world’s most widely used package registry for JavaScript, with plans to require stronger verification, expand package provenance, and integrate signed attestations across the registry.
Read more: GitHub blog
Austria’s military ditches Microsoft
Another European public sector body is set to distance itself from the thorny clutches of Big Tech.
Austria’s armed forces are moving from Microsoft to LibreOffice. Beyond licensing, the shift is framed around sovereignty and interoperability, and it’s the latest in a long line of European institutions to embrace open source alternatives.
Read more: ZDNET
RubyGems dust-up spills onto GitHub
RubyGems, the package manager for the Ruby programming language, saw several maintainers kicked off GitHub after a dispute over governance and conduct rules.
Read more: The New Stack
Hosts back Astro and TanStack
Astro (web framework) and TanStack (suite of frontend libraries) secured new sponsorships from Cloudflare, Netlify, and Webflow. The companies say joint funding makes these open source projects more sustainable, a rare case of competitors teaming up to shore up shared infrastructure.
Read more: Cloudflare blog
And finally…
Open screen time
Most monitors chase faster refresh rates and brighter colors, but Modos is taking a different approach. The folks behind the project launched a crowdfunding campaign for a 13.3-inch E Ink “paper monitor” — an open hardware design aimed at reducing eye strain, lowering power use, and keeping distractions at bay.
It connects over USB-C, weighs less than a laptop, and invites tinkering thanks to its open source underpinnings.
The campaign has already blown past its target, raising more than $166,000 from 261 backers — about 151% of its $110,000 goal. With funding secured on September 18, the Modos monitor is now available for pre-order, priced between $199 and $599 depending on configuration.
Read more: Hackaday