Stephe calls out my mistake in calling a company open source. I'm not sure why he chose this time to do it, as I routinely mislabel companies "open source" for two reasons: I don't have a good, short, alternative descriptor for them, and I'm really hoping that they'll actually live up to the name. I'm pretty restrictive on who deserves the term "open source." For me, it's simple: someone who publishes their sour Stephe calls out my mistake in calling a company open source. I’m not sure why he chose this time to do it, as I routinely mislabel companies “open source” for two reasons: I don’t have a good, short, alternative descriptor for them, and I’m really hoping that they’ll actually live up to the name. I’m pretty restrictive on who deserves the term “open source.” For me, it’s simple: someone who publishes their source code under an OSI-approved license. I actually go one step further and don’t really consider someone open source unless they publish all of their customer-consuming source code under such a license. (But the fact that it’s “simple” doesn’t make it simple. I’ve been struggling with this since early 2006, but more recently I’ve put forth a definition that I think works. Let me know if you do, too.) Here was my suggestion earlier this year:An open source company is one that, as its core revenue-generating business, actively produces, distributes, and sells (or sells services around) software under an OSI-approved license.I still think it fits. The problem is in how to talk about everyone else. Most “companies that share some source” have good intentions but have too much history in proprietary software to fully shake off the last vestiges of their old model. They don’t believe customers really will pay them for full open source value. That’s fine, it’s just not open source in my view. Still, I’m hoping that positive examples from other companies that have gone 100% open will embolden them to try it out. Which is why I talk about those successful companies so much on this blog, to the point that some think I do it too much. I get criticized for talking about Red Hat, MySQL, Alfresco, etc. too often, but I do so to point out success using a 100% open source model (and now that I know that Zenoss, OpenNMS, and others (Interface21) use such a model, they’ll get more airplay here, too.So, Stephe, I take your point. But I need some help. What should I call these not-so-open source companies that have good intentions but aren’t quite there yet? Shared source? It’s a good term, but I think its association with Microsoft wouldn’t go over well with the companies themselves.Suggestions? Open Source