{"id":222,"date":"2005-11-17T15:54:20","date_gmt":"2005-11-17T20:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=222"},"modified":"2005-11-17T16:09:44","modified_gmt":"2005-11-17T21:09:44","slug":"is-open-source-media-an-abuse-of-the-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=222","title":{"rendered":"Is &#8220;Open Source Media&#8221; an abuse of the term?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A correspondent wrote me to<br \/>\n<a href='http:\/\/www.phillyfuture.org\/node\/2112'>object<\/a> to the fact that<br \/>\nthat-which-was-Pajamas-Media has launched as &#8220;Open Source Media&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s an established use of the term &#8220;open source&#8221; prior to<br \/>\nopen-source software, it&#8217;s spook-talk (intelligence-community jargon)<br \/>\nfor a data source that is not secret.  Various media outlets<br \/>\n(like <a href='http:\/\/www.radioopensource.org\/'>these guys<\/a>)<br \/>\nare, quite legitimately, keying off <em>that<\/em> sense of the<br \/>\nphrase.<\/p>\n<p>Are they, to some extent, influenced by the success and prestige of<br \/>\nthe open-source <em>software<\/em> movement?  Probably so&#8230;but since<br \/>\nneither I nor OSI has a trademark on the phrase &#8220;open source&#8221;, there&#8217;s<br \/>\nnot much we can do about that kind of coattail-riding.  It&#8217;s not even<br \/>\nclear that should try &mdash; better to concentrate on fighting<br \/>\nbattles we can win.<\/p>\n<p>I made the decision some time back, when I was still president of<br \/>\nOSI, to try to jawbone people out of using the phrase &#8220;open source&#8221;<br \/>\nonly when it would create confusion about software and software<br \/>\nlicensing.  That&#8217;s narrower ground and easier to defend.  Even though<br \/>\nOSI doesn&#8217;t have a legal lock on the term, almost everybody recognizes<br \/>\nour moral right to prescribe how it is used with respect to software (even Microsoft,<br \/>\ninterestingly enough).  In every case &mdash; <em>every<\/em> case<br \/>\n&mdash; that OSI has applied pressure, abusers have backed<br \/>\ndown.<\/p>\n<p>So yes, I&#8217;m not real pleased by OSM&#8217;s restrictive license, now that<br \/>\nit has been drawn to my attention; I do wish they had either chosen a<br \/>\ndifferent name or used something like a Creative Commons license.  But<br \/>\nI&#8217;m not going to fight them about it.  They&#8217;ve got a legitimate claim on<br \/>\nthe &#8220;spook&#8221; sense of the term, not the software sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A correspondent wrote me to object to the fact that that-which-was-Pajamas-Media has launched as &#8220;Open Source Media&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}