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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Big Threat to Open Source Software?From a broader perspective, there is nothing in particular that makes OpenAI's culture, business model, or ecosystem engagement "open." Most of its technology is developed behind closed doors, with little or no input from the public — a fact that distinguishes OpenAI from projects like OpenTelemetry or the Open Container Initiative, which are examples of vendor-agnostic, community-based efforts to advance technology. OpenAI collaborates with a handful of businesses, most notably Microsoft, but it would be hard to argue that it's taking an "open" approach to partner engagement; most of its partnerships have a clear profit-oriented goal.So, in short, there's nothing at all that makes OpenAI open.open-source-code-in-storyThe Problem with Defining 'Open'But again, it feels unfair to me to be overly critical of OpenAI about its choice of name.Related:Why Microsoft Copilot Technology Will Change How We WorkBeyond the fact that — as others have noted — the company originated as a non-profit and therefore could make some kind of claim in its earlier years about being "open" in the sense that it wanted its products to be freely available to everyone, there's the issue that the word "open" itself means everything and nothing.Historically, the term featured in the names of initiatives whose goal was to help standardize software platforms. A prominent example is X/Open, which was founded in the 1980s to promote standardization for Unix-like operating systems (and which later became part of the basis for The Open Group, which continues to promote vendor-neutral technology standards today).Then, in 1998, "open" took on a separate meaning when the term "open source software" was coined. Open source software is software whose source code is publicly available for study and reuse, which is quite different from vendor-neutral technology standards. The adoption of the term "open source" was also complicated given
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