Hedera has appointed Andrew Aitken as Chief Open Source Officer (COSO), to lead its realignment as a fully open source Web3 platform. Andrew is a veteran in the open source sector, having served as an open source expert to the White House, guest lecturer for Stanford’s Entrepreneur Program and founder of the industry’s only think tank. The addition of a COSO role, rarely found in the software industry, is a testament to Hedera’s commitment to promoting community collaboration both within its ecosystem and in the industry as a whole.

In his new capacity as Chief Open Source Officer, Aitken leverages deep domain expertise to assist Hedera in open sourcing everything from tooling, to cross-chain functionality and source code. Most recently, Andrew led the open source team at Wipro Technologies, championing open source adoption for enterprises and delivering business value through open-source service solutions. Wipro has played an important role in contributing to product development on the Hedera network, having served as a member of the Hedera Governing Council since 2020.

Aitken is an elected member of the Board of the Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS) and previously served as Wipro Board Adviser at the Open Source Security Foundation; Linux Foundation Networking. He was also on the board of OSEHRA, a non-profit dedicated to accelerating open source health reporting.

The announcement follows the successful launch of the ‘Hedera Improvement Proposal (HIP)’ program in 2022, which exists as a medium to propose new features or upgrades to the network — and simultaneously collect community thoughts, build consensus, and document dissenting opinions on issues and proposals.

Looking forward, Hedera intends to continue progressing toward full decentralization as it lays a solid foundation to grow its community action and involvement through its HIP program — and this new hire marks an important step in achieving this.