[the_pwner224]

I've read that the founders did honestly want to make an Open AI company when they started OpenAI, but that business model didn't work out (wow, what a surprise) so they were forced to switch to being not-Open. Regardless of whether you believe that, the "Open" part of their name has been extremely misleading for a long time. But the average person doesn't know that; they see that the company is called OpenAI and don't question the Open part.

I'm not a lawyer and I don't know what the law allows regulators to do, but I wouldn't mind if the government forced ClosedAI to change its name under some sort of truth in advertising law.

More importantly, we tech folks have specialized knowledge and it's our responsibility to not propagate harmful, deceptive propaganda like the OpenAI name. Especially for something as widely known and culturally relevant as ClosedAI. I've personally been calling it ClosedAI for a while now. When people ask I give them a quick 5 second explanation.

Another example, much less bad than ClosedAI, is "iPhone." It's not your phone, you don't control it. Apple can run and inject whatever code they want onto your ("i") Phone, and you can't make the phone run software which isn't approved by Apple. I personally refer to it as an ApplePhone (and ApplePad, Apple Mobile OS instead of iOS, etc.). I'll admit this is a pretty weak example; the name clearly has non-nefarious origins. But in the modern day, at a subtle psychological level, it's still misleading in an Orwellian sort of way. And it brings up a good opportunity to give "normal" people a quick 15-second intro to software freedom.

[btown]

In a way, the damage done to the word "open" is even more egregious - because OpenAI allowed people to access a SaaS product, for free, many people will now see the Open prefix as "you're allowed to play on my land."

The entire notion of "open source" will start to blur with "source-available" and even with "freemium SaaS" in the minds of an entire generation using a closed product called OpenAI to do their homework. How does OpenOffice distinguish itself from Google Docs when the word "open" means nothing? (Yes, LibreOffice, I see you there, but sadly your "fetch" is not going to happen in the English speaking world!)

One might say, "non-programmers don't need to know this" - but of course they do. They should know that a product that is truly open is guaranteed to be available so long as a community wants it to be - not at the whims of a corporation that could take away a freemium tier or revoke someone's ability to build code derived from a source-available license at will. And I fear this will take at least some wind out of the sails of a lot of incredible projects.

[leidenfrost]

We're all partly responsible for that.

Every time any open source project tries to make money, people quickly fork the project into a similar free-as-beer one: "OpenSomething wants my money? I'll fork it into LibreSomething then"

At this point, the point made by RMS that people can make money selling FOSS software just fine is naive at best.

[kgwgk]

> Another example, much less bad than OpenAI, is "iPhone." It's not your phone, you don't control it. Apple can run and inject whatever code they want onto your ("i") Phone

To the extent that the “i” means anything at all it does stand for “internet”.

[sebastiennight]

Aha, I've also resorted to replacing the syllable "smart" with "spy" in the names of devices (since the difference between a "normal/dumb" device and a "smart" device is always that the "smart" device's business model is being subsidized by grabbing your data).

But it's a lost battle, isn't it? :) We're tilting at windmills.

[sebastiansm]

The apple store don’t sell apples. Time to go to the court.

[AndrewHart]

Fun at parties.