The open secret of open washing – why companies pretend to be open source
The open secret of open washing – why companies pretend to be open source
This is a deceptive practice in which companies or organizations present their products, services, or processes as "open" when they are not truly open in the spirit of transparency, access to information, participation, and knowledge sharing. This term is modelled after "greenwashing" and was coined by Michelle Thorne, an internet and climate policy scholar, in 2009.
Some corporations use open washing to shield their models and practices from scientific and regulatory scrutiny, while benefiting from the "open" label.
Another major factor is that the EU AI Act provides special exemptions for "open source" models. This creates a powerful incentive for open washing: if their models count as open, they'll have far less restrictive requirements. That, in turn, means they'll need less money to meet regulatory requirements or have to clean their datasets of copyright and other intellectual property (IP) issues.
It's true, too, that the term open source is used way too loosely by many companies. We just have to think also about the recent débâcle with Winamp. And, as pointed out in the article, many of the Big Tech companies also punt products as being open source when they are not.
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The open secret of open washing
Allowing pretenders to co-opt the term is bad for everyone
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