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Openwashing: Users and Adopters Beware

Posted by Soulskill on from the your-new-word-for-the-day dept.

jenwike writes: With the success of open source software today, we are seeing organizations undertake more egregious marketing and promotion schemes that exaggerate their participation in, contributions to, and/or licensing of open source software. Their hope is to capitalize on the label of 'open source' and the success that goes along with it. The reality is that the responsibility is on the end-users to review the software and accompanying license to ensure it meets your expectations.

3 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. The End-Users most of the time don't really care by C.+Mattix · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From the End-User standpoint, really the only thing that they care about is that there is a "full featured" product that is free (as in beer) and they won't have to deal with marked-up license fees. Most of the time, if a company goes to a potential client and, for example, says they are going to use an Open Source CMS system, the client basically thinks "Great! My project will be cheaper because I won't have to pay additional license fees."

    In all reality, I would venture that the VAST majority of open source projects in the wild that are being used VERY RARELY have that source code looked at by anyone other than the developers that are building the system or those looking to exploit it.

    For most people who are more concerned with using a system than how it is built, "Open Source" just means they have to use Google for documentation instead of calling the vendor or reading a manual.

  2. Re:Ideological purity ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So, you'll excuse me if my first response is "not everyone gives a damn, and many people do not want to hear the screeching weasels which come along with this discussion".

    No, I'll not excuse you. Stallman sounded like a loon, yes, but so many things he mentioned in the past have come true, especially regarding school books and DRM. The screeching is necessary because people are stupid and won't listen to calm tones of voice.

  3. Been through this before by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Back in the early 90s "open systems" were the big thing. Everybody jumped on the bandwagon. For example, DEC renamed VMS to "OpenVMS" when they added some posix compliance stuff (God help anybody who had to use posix on vms).

    See here:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

    I went through many teeth-gnashing episodes at the university with people using "open systems" as their new favorite buzzword and of course treating vms as such. While I preferred vms to the mainframes of the day and it was far easier to deal with (had tcp/ip, for example) it wasn't really "open" in the way that I and many others saw as open.

    See also here:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

    This was the silly crap we were dealing with before FLOSS became popular. Of course, we have our own silly crap to deal with now but I assure you it's less mind-numbing.

    --
    Do you have ESP?