The Open Source Initiative (OSI), a public benefit corporation that oversees the Open Source Definition, has launched a WordPress news blog. Stefano Maffulli was appointed as OSI’s first Executive Director in 2021, and he is leading the organisation in overhauling its web presence.
The blog was launched on a subdomain of the opensource.org website, which runs Drupal 7 and is self-hosted on a Digital Ocean droplet. It is also tightly integrated with CiviCRM to manage member subscriptions, individual donations, sponsorship tracking, and newsletter distribution.
As Drupal 7 approaches its end of life in November 2022, the team intends to migrate everything to WordPress. They looked into managed Drupal hosting but discovered it was more expensive and required them to migrate to a more recent version of Drupal. Because D7 themes and plugins are incompatible with D9+, they saw no advantage in terms of time or simplicity.
Because the Tavern’s theme wasn’t yet on GitHub, Maffulli hired a developer to create a simple child theme based on the Twenty Twenty-Two default theme using WordPress’ new full-site editing features. He expressed gratitude for the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of FSE while overseeing the project.
Some OSI employees were already familiar with WordPress, which influenced their decision to use the software. The extensive functionality and third-party integrations were also important considerations. OSI is also looking into ways to give its members the ability to comment. This would necessitate a method to integrate authentication with CiviCRM in order to access members’ records.
The new Voices of Open Source blog began by highlighting the OSI affiliate network, which includes 80 organisations such as Mozilla, Wikimedia, the Linux Foundation, OpenUK, and others.
“One of the main objectives for OSI in 2022 is to reinforce our communication channels,” Maffulli said. “We’re improving the perception of OSI as a reliable, trustworthy organization. The OSI didn’t have a regular publishing schedule before, nor a content plan. Now we have established a regular cadence, publishing at least once a week (often more), commenting on recent news like a winning against a patent troll or court decisions about open source licenses, featuring our sponsors, and offering opinions on topics of interest for the wider community. It’s a starting point to affirm OSI as a convener of conversations among various souls of the open source communities.”
