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Openwashing: Users and Adopters Beware
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.
I find certain open source projects to be of high quality and very useful; I'm sad no equivalent things exist for many close sourced wares a business or person often needs to function. But I suck it up and go forward. In related news, at work Cisco told us a Windows FTP server is required to load wares into certain of their products, a Linux or BSD ftpd won't (and doesn't, we tried) work any more.
Rabid ideological open source are the vegans of the technology world -- mostly they piss people off and cause a lot of eye rolling as they foam at the mouth.
Being a poor communicator helps nobody. Give those people a Dale Carnegie book - they're just hurting the "cause".
But the ideology does have value - from it the community ethos is generated which results in transparency, helpfulness, and quality, all highly valuable qualities for a mission-critical software package. Those points are worth explaining in a reasoned and effective manor - one does not need to drop the passion to engage in a polite conversation.
It would be nice if it weren't only rich kids who had a choice to attend a school which taught logic, reason, persuasion, and rhetoric.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You're not wrong as a general rule, but there are plenty of organizations that do make use of the code to look at and having it be open helps even the people who just want the "free" aspect.
For instance, independent security labs can and will look at code. They then release information which aids me, as someone who may not look at the code, in making a decision on if it is safe to buy.
Open source is not about being free, it is mostly about the sharing of information with the goal of making it better and aiding everyone. Those who open source their software get the benefit of other people extending it, who then contribute back to the project in some manner. Those who use Open Source software can take advantage of the community and its work and oversight.
Being free is mostly a side effect of the fact that if you give up the source code, the software can be copied easily, and it can be made difficult to control trade secrets or algorithms, so there is little point in charging for the code itself. Opening the code removes the ability to adequately charge for the "intellectual property" but as a side effect, being "free" is a huge motivator for adoption as well, so it is usually win-win.
And although I agree that Open Source *can* mean reading a manual or Googling, that is *not* part of open source. Bear in mind, most people get support for Microsoft products in the same way... ie. Googling. You do have the option of buying certain support or developer resources from MS, but there are also service companies out there that operate services for Open Source software in the same way. Percona comes to mind for MySQL. If it is open sourced, you can have support and have it paid for. The question is whether anyone actually wants to pay for that when there is Google.