Is opensource.org legit or a scam?
Official Open Source Initiative nonprofit website, registered since 1998, with verified 501(c)(3) status and zero scam indicators.
Analysis Summary
No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Website Preview
Automated page render — captured in a safe sandbox. What an ordinary visitor would see when loading the site. See full visual analysis →
Visual Screenshot Analysis
We capture a fresh screenshot of the live page and ask a vision model to look for scam visual patterns — fake trust badges, countdown timers, overlay pop-ups, and visual clones of legitimate brands.
Visual red flags detected in the screenshot
The page presents a clean, professional design consistent with the Open Source Initiative's known branding and layout, with no visual scam indicators detected.
What our vision model saw
4 signalsProfessional layout consistent with a legitimate nonprofit organization homepage
Standard navigation menu with expected sections (About, Licenses, Blog, Programs)
Recognizable Open Source Initiative logo and registered trademark symbol visible
No urgency tactics, countdown timers, or suspicious overlays present
MT Intelligence
opensource.org is the official domain of the Open Source Initiative, a California public-benefit nonprofit corporation with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status since 2000 (EIN 91-2037395). The domain was registered on 1998-02-11, making it one of the longest-standing and most established sites in the open source ecosystem. Our antivirus network flagged zero detections across 92 engines, browser blocklists are clean, and the hosting IP has zero abuse reports. The page displays professional nonprofit branding, standard navigation, and legitimate content about open source licenses and definitions. Independent trust aggregators rate it with maximum scores (100/100), and no scam reports or complaints appear in any search results. The organization maintains active operations including recent blog posts, license reviews, and UN Open Source Principles endorsement in 2025.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for opensource.org, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- Registered on 1998-02-11; one of the longest-standing domains in the open source ecosystem.
- Official website of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), a California public-benefit nonprofit corporation with 501(c)(3) status (EIN 91-2037395), as confirmed by Wikipedia, its own site, and ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer.
- Maintains the Open Source Definition (OSD) and the authoritative list of OSI Approved Licenses; widely recognized by governments, companies, and the open source community.
- No scam reports, phishing complaints, or malware associations found across multiple targeted searches.
- Third-party scanners (GridinSoft, Desenmascara) rate it as fully legitimate with maximum trust scores and high global traffic rank.
- Active organization with recent activity including blog posts, license reviews, UN Open Source Principles endorsement (2025), and revenue of $811,527 reported for 2023.
- GridinSoftopen
"We reviewed opensource.org and found strong legitimacy signals. Its current trust score is 100/100, and the site appears low-risk and legitimate rather than ..."
- Desenmascara.meopen
"opensource.org is a high-traffic website (ranked #2,410 globally on the Tranco list). No fraud signals, brand impersonation, or suspicious activity were ..."
California public benefit nonprofit corporation with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status since 2000; EIN 91-2037395; founded 1998
We searched scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, and general web sources for opensource.org and found zero scam reports or complaints. Instead, we found strong positive signals: the site is confirmed as the official website of the Open Source Initiative, a California public-benefit nonprofit corporation with 501(c)(3) status since 2000 (EIN 91-2037395), founded in 1998. The organization maintains the Open Source Definition and the authoritative list of OSI-approved licenses, recognized globally by governments, companies, and the open source community. Recent activity includes blog posts, license reviews, UN Open Source Principles endorsement (2025), and reported revenue of $811,527 for 2023. Independent trust aggregators rate it with maximum legitimacy scores.
Antivirus Engines
Security Scans
Checked against the major public blocklists used by browsers and security tools — no hits.
Contact Verification
We fetched the page and looked for real-world contact details. Legitimate businesses almost always publish an email on their own domain, a phone number, and a postal address. Scam shops usually don't.
- No phone number listed on the page.
- No postal address visible on the page.
- Contact email on the site's own domain (osi@social.opensource.org).
- Links to 3 social profiles.
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1301http://opensource.org/
- 2200https://opensource.org/
Server Reputation
Still, stay alert
No major threat indicators — but a clean scan does not guarantee every page is safe, and phishing emails routinely spoof real domains.
- Double-check the exact URL in your address bar
Confirm you are actually on opensource.org and not a lookalike like o-pensource.org.com or an IDN homoglyph.
- Use a password manager
Password managers only auto-fill on the exact domain they were saved for — they refuse to fill lookalike domains, which is the single best phishing defence.
- OpenDiscuss this site on the forum
If you have first-hand experience with this site — good or bad — share it with the MalwareTips community.
Reputation Sources
How this domain rates across independent threat-intelligence and blocklist providers.
Referenced Domains
Outbound domains this page links to or loads resources from. Each links to its own security scan.
Safety FAQ
Common questions about this site, answered directly from the scan data above — so the answers always reflect the latest verdict on this page.
- Our automated security review found no threat indicators on opensource.org. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- opensource.org passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 97/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. opensource.org presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Google Trust Services · WE1, expiring in 44 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- No. All 92 antivirus engines in our malware network report opensource.org as clean.
- No. opensource.org is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- opensource.org resolves to an IP operated by Cloudflare, Inc. in US (usage type: Content Delivery Network). Hosting location alone doesn't make a site good or bad, but unusual geography for a brand's claimed country is one of many signals we weigh.
- Yes. opensource.org sits in the global top-100k on Cloudflare Radar, which means it has substantial real-world traffic. That does not automatically make it safe, but established brands almost always rank here and throwaway scam domains almost never do.
- This is a permanent record of the scan run on June 9, 2026. The verdict and evidence above reflect that scan and do not change on their own. If circumstances around opensource.org have changed, MalwareTips staff can run a fresh scan, which re-runs every check from scratch and publishes an updated report.
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