Bonum Certa Men Certa

Open Source Initiative (OSI) Co-founder Bruce Perens: Open Invention Network (OIN) is Protecting the Software Patent System From Reform and OSI Approves Faux 'Open' Licences (Openwashing)

Well, maybe ironically he posted this in a Microsoft site. Microsoft now gets the majority of the OSI's work/budget, basically to help cement its monopoly. OSI has just advertised a job opening for its leadership because at the moment it lacks any.

Bruce Perens in 2020

Summary: Richard Stallman was right about the OSI and the fake 'movement' that claims to have 'coined' the term "Open Source" (it wasn't a new term at all; it had been used in another context and the Free software community spoke of things like "Open Hardware" years earlier)

THE "OPEN SOURCE" so-called 'movement' (see Perens using that term, "movement") turned out to be a sham. It banned its own co-founder and Perens, the second co-founder, resigned in protest earlier this year. Ever since then he occasionally explains what went wrong. Richard Stallman speaks to him about it (he told me so).



"I frequently urge people to stop saying "Open Source". We need to speak about Software Freedom (or Free/libre software) instead."In 2020, for the first time in more than 15 years, I abandoned news about "Open Source" completely, seeing that the majority of them were just openwashing and promotion of proprietary prisons such as GitHub (Microsoft surveillance and censorship). To me, personally, "Open Source" is dead. It'll never come back. The label or the term "Open Source" is also increasingly meaningless. Many software licences that are called "Open Source" are not Free software-compliant. They're an openwashing slant to help sell proprietary software and/or mass surveillance in Clown Computing.

I frequently urge people to stop saying "Open Source". We need to speak about Software Freedom (or Free/libre software) instead. Any time we (still) say "Open Source" we help those who hijacked the term to push a toxic agenda, in effect helping a new-age monopoly by mass deception.

It's kind of sad in a way. It's difficult. For many years I did in fact use the term "Open Source"; so seeing what happened to it is frustrating. But it's too late to change that now. That's why Perens quit the OSI. That's why ESR went on the mailing list and fought back, only to be banned by the very organisation that he had helped found.

"Open Source" has always been a sham, but many assumed it to be well-meaning; Stallman was right about it. "I had an idea though about OSI and their push on their OSI-approved licenses," one reader told us earlier this week. She has been around this scene since the 1990s and she knows what really happened. And "still," she says, "when clearly they are long done... since Perens did say there were licenses that never should have been approved (and I never saw any effort to improve that situation after he said it...) and since he said there were loopholes - I will evaluate a few and write up an analysis."

Perens approved 2020In the meantime she left us with a bunch of relevant screenshots we cannot see (without a Microsoft account or spying by Microsoft). Notice these openwashers and people who speak of "virus" (in relation to a software licence, see image on the right). Those people are active in a Microsoft site (proprietary and surveillance) while claiming to do "Open Source".

Our reader thinks the whole thing is mostly a scam. Charlatans make money from the scam.

"Meeting people in real life was an eye opener! :) At SCaLE 15x in 2017," she recalls, "I attended the law track, where I met a Lawyer claiming to be a Free and Open Source Lawyer... who didn't know the difference. We did explain the difference to him during happy hour.

"Although IANAL, I knew more than the lawyers present who did not have the basic understanding of copyright - Example, they were arguing a moot point because they did not have basic knowledge of functional v speech."

Here are some more comments regarding OSI on Linkedin:

Bruce Perens

Richard Stallman once said:

"When I do this, some people think that it's because I want my ego to be fed, right? Of course, I'm not asking you to call it "Stallmanix"!"


We'd like to see Torvalds' reaction to people saying that he's releasing "GNU" each time he releases a new version of Linux (kernel). He'd be more pissed off than RMS ever was...

We're still looking for additional loopholes regarding the OSI scam and the creation of parallel 'movements' (like calling GNU "Linux" and Free software "Open Source" -- only to be taken over by the likes of Microsoft at the Linux Foundation and OSI). To be continued...

Recent Techrights' Posts

Military-Grade Anti-Linux Microsoft Propaganda Using Microsoft LLMs in Fake 'News' Sites (Slopfarms)
This is part of a pattern
Rust is Starting to Seem More Like Microsoft-hosted "Digital Maoism", Not a Legitimate Effort to Improve Security
Maybe this is very innocent, but they seem to have taken a solid, stable program from a high-profile Frenchman and looked for ways to marry it with GitHub, i.e. Microsoft/NSA
 
GNU (and the FSF) Still Changing the World
Today, in 2025, GNU powers almost everything
Links 09/05/2025: Analog Computer and First time at FOSDEM
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 08, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, May 08, 2025
Links 08/05/2025: Mass Layoffs at Google Again, India/Pakistan Tensions Continue to Grow, New Pope (US) Selected
Links for the day
"Victory Day" - Part I: That is the Day Microsofters Who Assault Women Pay for Their Actions in Foreign Land (Using "Guns for Hire" Who Attack Their Own Country for American Dollars)
Adding a friend from Microsoft to the docket didn't help
Gemini Links 08/05/2025: Practical Gemini Use Case, Shutdown of the Blanket Fort Webring
Links for the day
Links 08/05/2025: "Slop Presidency", US Government Defunds Public Broadcasting
Links for the day
Lasse Fister, Organiser of Libre Graphics Meeting, Points Out the Code of Conduct is Likely Violated by the Same People Who Promote Codes of Conduct (and Then Bully Him Into Cancelling a Keynote)
I am starting to see Lasse Fister as another victim
LLM Slop Attacks Not Only Sites of Free Software Projects But Also Bug Reporting Systems (Time-wasting, in Effect "DDoS")
Microsoft, the leading purveyor and promoter of slop, is a cancer
The Richard Stallman (RMS) "European Tour" Carries on In Spite of the Nuremberg Incident
Some people spoke about how they saw yesterday's talk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 07, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 07, 2025
The CoC Means the Founder of GNU/Linux Cannot Talk and a 72-Year-Old Man With Cancer is Somehow a "Safety" Risk?
Those who don't like RMS are not forced to attend his talks
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: A Shopping Spree and Digital Gardening
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: Pegasus Guilty and a Path Towards EU Without Russian Energy
Links for the day
People Used to Talk
If pets can live a measurably happy life without gadgets and "apps", why can't humans?
Outsourcing GNU/Linux to Microsoft GitHub Promoted by Microsoft LLM Slop and Army Officers
Something doesn't seem right
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part III: No More Media Lawsuits From Brett Wilson LLP This Year, One Can Only Guess Why
People leak a lot of material to Techrights because they know, based on the track record, that the sources will be protected and whatever gets published will stay online, in full, no matter how stubborn an effort (even lawsuits and blackmail) will be sent its way
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: Adopting GrapheneOS, Further Enshittification of Flickr
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: CISA Gutted, Debt-Saddled (Likely Insolvent) 'Open' 'AI' (Proprietary Slop) Faking Its Financial State Again
Links for the day
Finland, Lithuania, and Latvia Fortify Their Digital Border With GNU/Linux
This month's data from statCounter is particularly interesting near the Baltic Sea
The European Patent Office (EPO) Has a Very Profound Corruption Issue, Far More Urgent an Issue Than Pronouns
a rather long document
Richard Stallman Gives Public Talk at Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic
"For programs that you could run, and for network services that could do your own computing, under what circumstances is it reasonable to trust them?"
Today We Turn 18.5
The eighteenth "and a half" anniversary
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 06, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 06, 2025