IIRC, a court recently ruled that calling closed-source software "open-source" in marketing is false advertising. Does this apply to "open" on its own? For example, is the name of OpenVMS false advertising? My first thought when I saw the name was "this is going to be open-source," and I was quite surprised to see that it is proprietary.
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13"In July 1992,[48] DEC renamed VAX/VMS to OpenVMS as an indication for its support of open systems industry standards such as POSIX and Unix compatibility" - probably made sense at the time! – user253751 Aug 08 '22 at 18:42
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36Back in 1992 when it was renamed with the word 'Open' the open source movement was in its infancy. At the time, it was the standards that were open. – Weather Vane Aug 08 '22 at 18:48
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3Do you perchance have a link to the court case you're referring to? – Jack Aidley Aug 09 '22 at 07:06
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7"Open" is a word with a broad meaning, and "open source" has a very specific meaning. "Open" was in common use in IT field in late 80s/early 90s, meaning "interoperable", for example OpenServer, OPEN LOOK, OpenDoc, OPENSTEP et al. – el.pescado - нет войне Aug 09 '22 at 19:06
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@JackAidley it's Neo4j v Purethink. https://lwn.net/Articles/888291/ https://blog.opensource.org/court-affirms-its-false-advertising-to-claim-software-is-open-source-when-its-not/ https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.335295/gov.uscourts.cand.335295.140.0.pdf – Someone Aug 09 '22 at 19:13
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@Someone: I thought that was what you were talking about. What the court actually found that the company were (1) licensing stuff they didn't have rights to as "open source" and (2) weren't the drop-in replacement they claimed anyway. It wasn't about closed source software masquerading as open source. Although even then "found" is dubious since they actually settled rather than reaching a court judgement. The presentation by certain Open Source advocates otherwise has been, at best, misleading. – Jack Aidley Aug 09 '22 at 20:31
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@JackAidley oh, okay. So it might be legal if e.g. Microsoft advertised Windows as "open source"? – Someone Aug 09 '22 at 21:18
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@Someone: I have no idea (I'd guess not?) but that course case didn't address it. – Jack Aidley Aug 09 '22 at 21:28
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So basically it is "Open" in the same way JavaScript is connected to Java. – Joel Croteau Aug 11 '22 at 18:19
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The limits of "deceptive advertising" are determined by lawsuit. This note assembles a number of cases where names were or were not held to be per se deceptive ("Diet Coke" is not a deceptive name; self-certification of quality often is). A finding of deceptive advertising is founded on an intent to deceive, and is not based on whether consumers make false inferences. For instance, "natural" is puffery, but "organic" is has a specific and enforceable meaning under the law in the US, governed by USDA regulations. The historical intent behind the OpenVMS name name selection is to refer to a kind of computing, open system computing. It is consumer error to confuse open system with open source.
user6726
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OpenVMS does not advertise itself as "open-source", nor does the the name indicate it's open-source. For example, if the name were "OpenSourceVMS" then there might be a basis for such confusion.
VMS Software, Inc., the current owner of the product, does not make any open-source claims for the product itself although there are a number of components that are compatible with it that are open-source.
I suppose that if you feel that you have been damaged by your misunderstanding of their product terms due to the name you could file a lawsuit.
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7In my mind it does not. The word "open" is NOT synonymous with "open-source". – jwh20 Aug 08 '22 at 18:45
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3Unless someone has a reference to some case law that might be applicable, no, there is no way to know for sure. Even with case law, it's not a guarantee. This is pretty much irrelevant and obsolete software anyway. Who even cares? Are you prepared to hire an attorney to pursue this? Even in an absolute best case, what damages might you hope to recover? – jwh20 Aug 08 '22 at 18:48
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4@Someone it's just a name, not a promise. You could buy a product named "GreenGrass" but it need not be green, or grass. It's a name. – Weather Vane Aug 08 '22 at 19:01
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@WeatherVane a name can be a promise; surely it isn't okay to market a product called BlueBox and send customers green bags? – Someone Aug 08 '22 at 19:04
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9@Someone: You might be surprised to learn that Coca-Cola does not contain cocaine, then. – Jörg W Mittag Aug 08 '22 at 19:38
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2Does this answer OP's question in any meaningful way? The question is whether an "open" designation is false advertising for a non-open-source project. The fact that the connection between "open" and "open source" doesn't exist "in your mind" doesn't tell us anything about what the actual law. If you're just going to offer a personal take and then invite OP to research cases or ask a judge, I don't think we're any closer to an answer. – bdb484 Aug 08 '22 at 20:05
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37@Someone As far as I know, there has never been a time when one could buy a rain forest or river on Amazon.com. Nor has Adobe ever sold mud bricks. Tater Tots aren’t even shaped like children nor made from young potatoes. There are at least two entities named “Black Box” and neither sells black boxes. Apple does not sell fruit of any kind, and their iCloud service has nothing to do with suspended water droplets. I could go on. If a brand name were any kind of promise, there would be a lot of potential litigation over it. – Todd Wilcox Aug 09 '22 at 03:04
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1@Someone BlueBox was a real thing and was neither blue nor box. It is usually a speaker connected to the keypad. – Revolver_Ocelot Aug 10 '22 at 07:04
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@JörgWMittag You might be surprised to learn that coca cola still in fact contains coca leaves. The cocaine is extracted for use in medicine and the leaves are then shipped to coca cola to be used in their product. – jesse_b Aug 10 '22 at 16:22
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As @jwh20 said, OpenVMS is not advertised as being open-source, it just uses the word "Open" in its name. There are many other products that use this naming style that are also not open source.
Before the term "open source" became popular, the term "open" was often used to refer to adherence to open standards. It would also refer to software and hardware with published specifications that could be emulated; for instance Apple's Macintosh design is considered "closed" because they prohibit creating clones, while the IBM PC architecture is "open" (hence the proliferation of companies that produced PC-compatible systems).
Given that there are so many interpretations of "open" in the IT industry, I think it would be very unlikely for a court to judge that using it in the name of this product would specifically imply that it's open source.
More generally, brand names are rarely expected to be literal descriptions of the products. The FDA (and analogous bodies in other countries) has rules about using specific terms in food and drug names (e.g. "XXX juice" requires a certain percentage of the product to be XXX), but I think there are few similar regulations in other industries.
You can jump to whatever conclusions you like, but unless this is were a widespread confusion, I don't think they would be considered to be deceptive.
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What does "open" without source even mean? Besides, as others already pointed a word embedded in a name might not mean anything. But let's say that they actually asserted in a statement that their software is "open".
Is open-source the only meaning that the word "open" can have?
How about closed source software with an open API?
How about software that reads/writes open document formats vs proprietary ones?
How about software that allows itself to be installed on any compatible hardware vs software where vendor lock-in is enforced with some sort of hardware key. Think OSX(x86) vs Windows.
What other meanings might "open" have? I think it's more than just source code.
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