infobong.com

The Talent Show has a great post ridiculing the newly-launched right-leaning media business Open Source Media or OSM™, which collections contributions from bloggers, primarily from the conservative/authoritarian side of the political spectrum. I understand why people might want to use the "open source" metaphor to describe certain modes of media production, but The Talent Show makes a great point about OSM™'s name, saying "Yes, the trademark symbol is part of the abbreviation to remind people that they're not that 'open source'."

A few weeks back, I presented a paper at a grad student conference explaining for communication/humanities types why the open-source label isn't quite appropriate for talking about media projects. I explained the difference between human-readable and machine-readable code, asserting that "I hope media and politics are all human-readable." I do think "open source" is a useful metaphor, but I hear far too many people use the term without a firm understanding of what it signifies.