Simon Phipps is an independent consultant providing insight and knowledge on open source to businesses and governments worldwide. He is also President of the Open Source Initiative, the non-profit organisation that advocates for open source software, builds bridges between open source communities, and maintains the canonical list of open source licenses. His writing is featured in InfoWorld, Computerworld, O’Reilly Radar, and other publications. He is a Director of the UK’s Open Rights Group, and is on the advisory board of Open Source for America.
Phipps was involved at a strategic level in some of the world’s leading technology companies. In addition to senior leadership positions, he has worked in hands-on roles as field engineer, programmer, and systems analyst, as well as running a software publishing company. He worked with OSI standards in the 80s, on the first commercial collaborative conferencing software in the 90s, and helped introduce both Java and XML at IBM. He was a founding Director of the Open Mobile Alliance.
In mid-2000 Phipps joined Sun Microsystems, where he helped pioneer Sun’s employee blogging, social media, and community engagement programs. In 2005, he was appointed Chief Open Source Officer, coordinating Sun’s extensive participation in Free and Open Source software communities until he left in 2010. In that role he oversaw the conversion to free software of the full Java platform, the Solaris UNIX operating system, the SPARC architecture, and the rest of Sun’s broad software portfolio, all under OSI-approved free licenses.
He holds a degree in electronic engineering, and is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the British Computer Society.
