Open Source Initiative defends disallowing board candidate after timezone SNAFU The Open Source Initiative's (OSI) 2025 Board of Directors election is again mired in controversy. In 2021, OSI, the public benefits corporation that oversees the Open Source Definition from which numerous open source software licenses descend, confronted voting irregularities and had to redo its election. This year, OSI …
That's not exactly reliable - especially when people like me have them turned off!
Does anybody turn them on?
In the heyday of the "Miriam Abacha" scams half the crap in my inbox was these receipts. My work address was used in the scam email's envelope From_ address presumably garnered from uunet news posts or the address books of compromised accounts.
Having them turned off doesn’t stop others from using them.
I have had people who have them turned on, so everytime I open a message from them, I get the sender has requested a read receipt dialogue box, I always say no as I have yet to actual see and thus read the message.
That also shows a problem with - certain email clients - which like to show you a dialogue that makes you give that immediate, far too early, response. As you say, you haven't actually read the thing yet.
"Read receipts" can be - ought to be - a Useful Thing, if only the MUAs were any damn good: just present a clear indicator that this message has requested the receipt and allow you to click on that when you've actually done the necessary - or not click on it ever, your choice.
Then the receipt can be used properly - instead of recipients writing a "yes, I've seen it" message and hitting "Send to all", and/or not being able to resist putting more guff into that message "while I'm writing to you". The receipts can be handled totally automatically, tallied, used to show a list of those who've responded (or not) etc; these results can be kept within the sender's MUA or a bit of script can post them onto a publicly readable web page...
But no, what could be a useful feature has, by the grace of incompetent UX, been turned into a scourge that clearly doesn't fill the hearts of El Reg readers with joy :-(
Actually turning off read receipts does exactly what you are claiming it does not do. If someone sends me an email with a read receipt request I do not see that dialog or send them their receipt because I have read receipts turned off. It has been this way since the dawn of time, or at least email.
I think they mean "email icon beacons".
Here's the email as it appears in Gmail:
Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/HWkXbxq.png
Email source: https://paste.debian.net/1358418/
The email source contains the value "<img src="https://members.opensource.org/civicrm/mailing/open/?qid=746093" width='1' height='1' alt='' border='0'>" , which sounds like a web pixel to me.
I have images blocked, so I wasn't sending this non-consensual "read receipt". Gmail prompts for proper read receipts in the product, and there was no such prompt. https://support.google.com/mail/answer/9413651?hl=en
The email subject was "Your chance to shape the future of Open Source – self-nominate today!", sent 14 February, which didn't say "NEW DEADLINE INSIDE" or anything to make me suspect the email was important. It was the first time that a timezone was specified.
I probably never read it before doing research into why my application was rejected.
"it seems arbitrary and capricious to retroactively define all of these processes as being governed by UTC"
If a timezone isn't specified for a worldwide organisation, you should either assume that it's UTC or err on the side of caution and in this instance assume it's New Zealand time (or even better, check!)
Assuming it's the last possible mainstream timezone is just stupid and points to someone who doesn't understand global communications - and thus probably not someone you want on an international board.
> “and in this instance assume it's New Zealand time” ?
OSI is headquarter in Palo Alto, California, so also normally operating on Pacific Time.
>” Assuming it's the last possible mainstream timezone is just stupid and points to someone who doesn't understand global communications”
Doing a lot of international stuff (who doesn’t in this industry), I find I still have to double check the current daylight savings adjusted time zone is, because my eyes and thus memory focus on the 2 pm start time of a webinar etc. and miss the EST designation and thus currently is a 7pm UK start time. Fortunately, this tends to work in my favour as I can readjust work to ensure I am at home etc.
Hence whilst I agree they should of double checked, I can see why they may have failed.
Different OSI, but the OSI you mention isn't actually a French phrase. Its English name is the International Organisation for Standardization, and they picked ISO as the short form specifically because it didn't match in either English (IOS) or French (OIN), so neither side would feel slighted. AFAIK it's actually headquartered in Switzerland. The joys of international politics...
Oh, please.
The OSI's particular "Open Source Definition" came *after* they'd collected the Classic Licences - MIT, BSD, GPLs being the most blindingly obvious - that were already well famous by 1998.
One of the reasons that the OSI's list was actually useful - laudable, even - when it was published was because it allowed a slow down the torrent of "new" licences that appeared, as authors could be pointed at the list and strongly recommended to pick one, rather than muddying the waters even more. The creation of yet more licences *after* the OSI came into being, which is the only way they could "descend" from the OSI's OSD, let alone "numerous" new licences, would be a failure, not something to happily declaim at the start of an article!
If I was a cynical person (cough), I'd be wondering about why there is a distinct lack of an easy to find, easy to read, list of licences in date order - and all of their versions, not just the latest and greatest. Something that actually showed the history of software licensing, before and after the OSI[1].
I cannot stress how true this is, and how deep it bites. From websites that insist on "state" (and don't allow you to pick a country) to websites that don't see a UK postcode as a "zip code" and insist on US phone numbers.
It was funny 30 years ago. Now it just explains an awful lot.
And as for those websites which have articles about non-US English-speaking countries written or auto-translated into US English, assume the reader is from the US so articles about the US have nomenclature which is left unexplained, and insists on translating units into rods to the hogshead...
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