Re: "Open Source" is vague term referring to guns, wine, spirituality, etc.

[Aaron Wolf]

Ah found the details:

https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.php

It wasn't intentional. They had attempted to trademark "open source" and 
they describe the application as "lapsed" rather than rejected, but the 
rest of the posting makes it seem effectively the same.

> Because the phrase "open source" cannot be trademarked, we must rely 
on market pressure to protect the concept from abuse.

So much for that. Although to be sure, I think despite the dilution and 
abuses, the dominant use does remain the OS Definition per OSI.

On 2022-03-14 14:17, Jean Louis wrote:
> * Aaron Wolf <wolftune@riseup.net> [2022-03-15 00:02]:
> > FWIW, I heard from people at OSI that they *chose* to release the trademark
> > on "Open Source" in general many years ago because they thought it would be
> > better to encourage the use of the term. Whether that was a good decision is
> > open to debate.
>
> It should be clear from my references that OSI does not have trademark
> "Open Source"; thus they were not able to "release" it.
>
> There is type of trademark called "community trademark" used for many
> people at once, members of specific group and unrelated to EU
> community trademark, but OSI did not move towards that direction. I
> find their legal behavior in trademarks rather self-centered.