How Open Is "Open"? – Industry Luminaries Join the Debate

Need an "open source" company nowadays merely be "a company that will help you make the switch to open source in your company"?

Nat Torkington raised this week the very real question of whether the term "open source" is now completely meaningless, in the sense that its meaning has now been sucked out of it by companies that purport to be open source yet don't allow users to feely download, compile, and use the software in question. One example Torkington cites is SugarCRM, whose license he describes as "a questionably modified OSI-approved license.

But Sam Minee of SilverStripe didn't agree with Torkington, and argued that, in order to describe itself as an "open source" company, all it need to be is "a company that will help you make the switch to open source in your company."

So where is the dividing line? How "open" is open? And is "open source" as a term dead or dying?

How Open Is "Open"? – Industry Luminaries Join the Debate.