Honest question; what does OSI actually do? I am involved with a number of OS projects and not once has OSI come up in any context, be it compliance, governance, education and so on.
They own the trademark of "Open Source" and use it to exercise a right to define which licences are truly open source. Now, I guess they are becoming involved in the question of what it means for an AI model to be open source, hence the politicking
Previously, if your project used one of the main OS licences you were good as far as they were concerned. They mainly existed to avoid lawyers coming up with licenses that water down the rights an open source license provides.
As a reminder, the OSI was formed as a corporate-friendly foil to Stallman's FSF. It exists not to champion the rights of users but to advance business interests.
This is how the OSI once described its own history on its website:
> The conferees decided it was time to dump the moralizing and confrontational attitude that had been associated with "free software" in the past and sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape. They brainstormed about tactics and a new label. "Open source", contributed by Chris Peterson, was the best thing they came up with.
Given that the OSI exists to water down a distinctly moral framework like Free Software into a version that is less "moralizing" and "confrontational" so as to be more appealing to corporations, the path that Open Source has taken over the last few years is hardly surprising.
I've become convinced that the cure for what has been ailing us in the FOSS movement is going to come only as we buck the corporate elements and return to something more closely resembling the original Free Software ethics-based movement. The GPL and AGPL are some of the only licenses not to get totally sucked up in corporate interests, and that's not a coincidence: they were founded on the deeply and sincerely held principle that it is an ethical imperative to advance the good of software's individual human users.
Honest question; what does OSI actually do? I am involved with a number of OS projects and not once has OSI come up in any context, be it compliance, governance, education and so on.
They undermine the Free Software movement with a more corporate and permissive bend. Its a yellow union for software freedom.
ESR’s dream for world dominance is dying a contorted death.
Film at 11
They're Microsoft's controlled opposition team designed to confuse legislation and sentiment surrounding free software
They own the trademark of "Open Source" and use it to exercise a right to define which licences are truly open source. Now, I guess they are becoming involved in the question of what it means for an AI model to be open source, hence the politicking
Previously, if your project used one of the main OS licences you were good as far as they were concerned. They mainly existed to avoid lawyers coming up with licenses that water down the rights an open source license provides.
The OSI emphatically does NOT:
own the trademark of “Open Source”.
They tried, and the USPTO denied their application for same. As such they have any such right to exercise.
They own a trademark for “Open Source Initiative”, and attempt to persuade the public that they alone define the term “Open Source”.
https://opensource.org/trademark-guidelines
> They own the trademark of "Open Source"
So every time I talk about open source I'm a dirty trademark infringer and IP pirate?
In their view, yes, if you don't conform to their prescriptivist take on the subject.
The fact that they have fooled so many people into thinking they own a trademark on a generic phrase is, however, pretty impressive.
As a reminder, the OSI was formed as a corporate-friendly foil to Stallman's FSF. It exists not to champion the rights of users but to advance business interests.
This is how the OSI once described its own history on its website:
> The conferees decided it was time to dump the moralizing and confrontational attitude that had been associated with "free software" in the past and sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape. They brainstormed about tactics and a new label. "Open source", contributed by Chris Peterson, was the best thing they came up with.
Given that the OSI exists to water down a distinctly moral framework like Free Software into a version that is less "moralizing" and "confrontational" so as to be more appealing to corporations, the path that Open Source has taken over the last few years is hardly surprising.
I've become convinced that the cure for what has been ailing us in the FOSS movement is going to come only as we buck the corporate elements and return to something more closely resembling the original Free Software ethics-based movement. The GPL and AGPL are some of the only licenses not to get totally sucked up in corporate interests, and that's not a coincidence: they were founded on the deeply and sincerely held principle that it is an ethical imperative to advance the good of software's individual human users.
[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20071115150105/https://opensource...
> The GPL and AGPL are some of the only licenses not to get totally sucked up in corporate interests
Neither of these licenses address the gigantic "internal use" loophole
FSF is also just as dogmatic as OSI in it's refusal to distinguish corporations from individuals