Our Mission

Our mission is to advance open source innovation by supporting engineering leaders that are dedicated to building products that will benefit the software engineering community and the tech industry as a whole.

At OSLabs, we believe that open source software is essential to the infrastructure of modern technology. Nearly all software today relies on free, public code, written and maintained by communities of developers. OSLabs seeks to drive innovation, transparency, and collaboration between open source developers and their users. 

OSLabs is a nonprofit tech accelerator devoted to furthering high-impact open source software within a collaborative community of dedicated engineers and mentors. By doing so, OSLabs advances open source innovation as well as the education and careers of software developers.

In our work, OSLabs is guided by the values of

Stewardship
Elevate existing open source

Collaboration
Work together to build

Excellence
Strive for continuous improvement

Inclusion
Encourage diverse backgrounds and diverse thought
Impact
Focus on solving the most important problems

What We Do

We produce and hold a repository of OS dev tools, such as technology specific IDEs, prototyping software, integration libraries, data visualizers, and K8 cluster orchestration tools. Our development team is responsible for maintaining OSLabs’ code repositories, pushing forward new engineering projects and determining which projects are promoted from the Beta library into the Main Library. 

OSLabs also provides financial support to other organizations or groups seeking to build innovative open source software. We strive to partner with industry leaders and forward-thinkers to understand industry needs and identify projects that are intellectually challenging and impactful.

OSLabs provides guidance, mentorship, and, in some cases, financial support for developers to work on maintaining or creating open source software:

  • For developers who would like to get their start in open source, we offer the OSLabs Beta Program

  • For developers who are already experienced working in open source, we offer an Engineering Fellowship Program and Hackathons organized with our partner organizations.

Meet the Team

Wendi Zhou

Executive Director

Wendi Zhou is a seasoned senior leader with a globally impactful track record in strategic planning, data science, and business analytics. As the Director of Strategic Planning & System Analysis at TouchTunes and previously as the Director of Data Science, Wendi has spearheaded growth and fostered innovation. Her extensive leadership experience includes roles at Conflict Analytics Lab, Queen’s University, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP (BLG), and Baker McKenzie.

As the Executive Director of OSLabs, Wendi manages the organization’s day-to-day operations and budget, while also fostering partnerships and advancing OSLabs’ goals in collaboration with the Engineering Team and the Board.

Jacqueline Salinas

Community Program Manager

With a profound dedication to fostering safe and inclusive communities, Jacqueline excels in leveraging her expertise to nurture open-source initiatives. As a seasoned community manager, she brings a wealth of knowledge acquired from esteemed tech organizations such as Intel and AWS. Over the past five years, Jacqueline has been immersed in the open-source realm, initially sparked by her tenure at The Linux Foundation. Since then, she has successfully cultivated six communities within the Cloud Native & Continuous Delivery ecosystem. In her role as the Community Program Manager, Jacqueline will closely collaborate with the OSLabs community to ensure the ongoing maintenance and expansion of both existing and new open source products.

Board of Directors

Our Governance

OSLabs is governed by a Board of Directors. Directors serve on a voluntary basis and bring in diverse perspectives and skill sets, such as engineering, organizational development, strategy, and community-building. Any member of the Board of Directors can nominate an individual to join the Board, and the candidate is admitted following a favorable vote by the Board. The Board appoints an Executive Director who is responsible for the day-to-day management of OSLabs and who is compensated for the work performed. 

The OSLabs Senior Technical Advisor and OSLabs Engineering Fellows are responsible for maintaining code repositories and pushing forward technical developments. Developers who consistently make valuable contributions to OSLabs’ projects may also be nominated to act as Technical Advisors to the Board.