OpenWashing

OpenWashing refers to practices that follow the letter of open source, but not the spirit, with the intent of falsely making something appear as open when it follows a closed ideology.

#Open Source

“Open” has many different meanings, but colloquially it is understood to have permissionless access to either participation in or results of a process. In practice, it may not even mean that.

In the context of Open Source¹ it is used to describe a permissionless model of collaboration in software development, with results made available to the general public and with few constraints.

#Related

The term #FOSSWashing is related. Both share their origins in the greenwashing term.