Even if this is entirely innocent and the result of someone trying to do the right thing... not a good look. They should honestly accept his candidacy and then revise the submission guidelines to be more specific in the future. To do otherwise makes it look like they're trying to exclude candidates to ensure a pre-selected candidate runs unopposed.

Bradley M Kuhn has since announced[1] the platform[2] Luke would have been running on (with a blog post for updates[3]):

Shared Platform for OSI Reform

Item 1. Repeal the Open Source AI Definition (OSAID)

Item 2. Adopt a process for formal review of previously approved licenses

Item 3. Remove “code of silence” from Board Member Agreement

Item 4. Directors should be allowed to use FOSS for Board activities

Which of these points are the OSI's current leadership so committed to blocking that they would make Luke's candidacy their hill to die on?

1. https://mas.to/@bkuhn@floss.social 2. https://codeberg.org/OSI-Reform-Platform/platform 3. https://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2025/02/28/osi-board-election.htm...

In the quoted email, it is stated that to "ensure a fair process, [the OSI] must adhere to the deadline for all candidates". I'm not sure what the OSI or their stakeholders have to gain by rejecting nominations for the sake of the few hours that result from timezone differences. The purpose of a deadline is to provide enough time to vet submissions to remove candidates who are ineligible or insincere, clear up any confusion stemming from mistakes in the submission and so on. It's not a race!

I received an email from OSI on February 14 that clearly indicates UTC. It looks like the message was sent to all OSI members. Did Luke not get this email?

Details: https://openpath.quest/2025/luke-missed-the-memo/

---

Update from OSI: https://bsky.app/profile/opensource.org/post/3liz24zxtfk2i

It’s an awkward situation for sure and the timezone could have been clearer.

But I also feel like if there’s no timezone for a deadline then you should assume the worst case (which here would be UTC) and make sure you submit before?

The author left it so late that in 95% of the world it was no longer the 17th Feb.

No excuses for this.

They should accept they made a mistake and accept the nomination.

You cannot assume a timezone. Especially as a computer programmer, we should know that. It was Feb 17 somewhere in the world until 12:00 Feb 18 UTC

This sucks, but they do list other times in UTC (well, GMT, actually), so it’s not unexpected IMO.