[ajb]

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.

[gonzo]

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

[ajb]

Woops, my apologies for spreading misinformation. I genuinely thought they had the trademark, but it's confirmed that they don't: https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...

Nevertheless, their Open Source Definition is reasonably respected

[hiatus]

This is trivial to look up. They do not in fact own the trademark "open source". Apparently I can't share a direct link to uspto search results, but you can search by owner and see they have 7 trademarks, none of which are for the term "open source".

https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/search/search-results

[thomascountz]

They own the trademark "Open Souce Initiative," which they say you can use with no advanced written permission if you follow all specific guidelines, including:

> the use of the term “Open Source” is used solely in reference to software distributed under OSI Approved Licenses. [1]

So you can refer to any software as "Open Source," regardless of their definition. But, if you call a piece of software "Open Source" alongside the use of the Open Source Initiative's trademark, then you must also use their definition of "Open Source," unless you otherwise have written permission.

[1]: https://opensource.org/trademark-guidelines

[nottorp]

> They own the trademark of "Open Source"

So every time I talk about open source I'm a dirty trademark infringer and IP pirate?

[ternaryoperator]

They do not own the Open Source trademark. They tried to trademark "open source", but the USPTO denied the application. Since then, they've worked at convincing the public that OSS means anything with a license approved by the OSI. This too is not so. For example, SQLite, arguably the most successful OSS tool ever built, is not covered by an OSI license and doesn't intend to be.

[Flimm]

SQLite has been dedicated to the public domain, ostensibly removing all copyright restrictions. Technically, it has no license for the OSI to list as an OSI license.

[CamperBob2]

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.

[nottorp]

Do they own it or not?

In the US you can trademark and patent H2O if you insist a bit, so it wouldn't surprise me if they actually owned the actual trademark.

[g0db1t]

They don't own it