[beyond-licensing] potential practical outcomes

[Brian Behlendorf]

On Thu, 21 Apr 2016, Karl Fogel wrote:
> Allison Randal <allison at opensource.org> writes:
>> Here are a few that have come up already, with my own best guess on the
>> type of outcome they'd be:
>>
>> - Program: OSaaS standard (w/ logo etc)
>
> No reservations on this idea -- I think it'd be really useful.

+1

> Some reservations about the second idea, though:
>
>> - Campaign: persuade companies to stop using "community" when they
>> really mean "open source", and stop using "enterprise" when they really
>> mean "proprietary"
>
> Even though it was my rant (though one I'm sure many of us share!), I'm 
> not sure this one is politically a good thing for the OSI to undertake 
> -- at least as one of the first things beyond licensing.
>
> A lot of companies who support the OSI, and who might even support OSI 
> financially, would suddenly feel that OSI is trying shame them into not 
> using marketing language that seems perfectly natural & effective to 
> them.  This would be campaign that has the potential to turn allies into 
> enemies.
>
> Now, granted, currently those allies are doing something that is mildly 
> destructive to open source... So maybe the way to go about it is to seek 
> private consultation with some of those companies first, and try to 
> cooperatively explore solutions with them.  Even if only a few companies 
> cooperate at first, that's a good start, and is something that can be 
> pointed to in each discussion with a new company, for a possible 
> snowball effect.
>
> I guess I'm just saying that "campaign" might not be the best way to 
> approach this, initially.  A behind-the-scenes effort, starting with 
> companies most likely to be receptive to changing this aspect of their 
> marketing, might be the way to start.  Once enough of them are doing it, 
> *then* maybe a public campaign becomes practical.

Rather than attack its surface by focusing on terminology, perhaps we 
could attack this issue at its core: companies who think building 
psuedo-communities around a freemium version of their proprietary 
"enterprise" product is an afterthought, or another way of labelling a 
free trial marketing program, rather than building and engaging an open 
source community as a peer and as a source of innovation and resilience. 
A model set of recommendations about development practices and governance 
- not so much "the project must live in a 501c3" but much more "your 
development discussions must take place online, best if by email or some 
other async trackable medium, rather than F2F inside one company's walls" 
- the more that kind of mistaken perspective will crumble.

Brian