This mechanism is advanced as an alternative to patent-protected seeds sold by large agriculture companies such as Monsanto or DuPont.
[2] Founders include Jack Kloppenburg,[3] Irwin Goldman,[3] Claire Luby, Thomas Michaels, Frank Morton,[4] Jonathan Spero, Alejandro Argumedo, and Jahi Chappell.
Lawn joined the OSSI board of directors in its early stages, providing invaluable contributions from the freelance breeding community and the seed industry.
OSSI is governed by a board of directors and as of July 2017[update] includes 36 plant breeders and 46 seed company partners in its work.
The work of University of Wisconsin sociologist Jack Kloppenburg, particularly his book First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology, 1492-2000 (2nd ed.
Originally published in 1990, then updated in 2000, this book chronicles the vast changes in seed sovereignty that took place during the 20th century through the rise of modern plant breeding approaches, the expansion of intellectual property rights, and emerging crop biotechnologies.
Kloppenburg himself was inspired by the work of writers and activists Pat Roy Mooney, a Canadian, and Cary Fowler, an American, who began engaging with issues of the public versus private ownership of seed and genetic resources in the 1970s.
Kloppenburg documented the ever-increasing encroachments upon the traditional rights of farmers, gardeners, and plant breeders to save, replant, share, or breed with seed, as well as forced plant breeders and all others interested in crop genetic resources to confront the degree to which they had lost or were losing "freedom to operate" with their seeds.
One of the consequences of an increasing global awareness of the finite nature of crop genetic resources and the debate over ownership of these resources has been the establishment of gene banks and seed banks in many countries, notably Fowler's recent efforts to develop the Svalbard Global Seed Vault off the coast of Norway in the Arctic Svalbard Archipelago.
International efforts, coordinated through the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the United Nations Environment Program, and manifest through agreements such as the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and the Convention on Biological Diversity, have sought global solutions to sustainable and fair use of the planet's crop genetic resources.
OSSI provides maximal freedom to operate for those who wish to save, replant, share, sell, trade, breed, and otherwise innovate with seeds.
Several scientific journal articles[10][11][12] have explored ideas surrounding open source plant breeding, genetic variation, and intellectual property.