Talk:Open washing

Free in FOSS bears lots of weight.

Associating open washing with FOSS can be too much. If an application is open source, consumers can compile or verify the application themselves. freedom in FOSS is more legal and licensing matter which doesn't directly effect consumers.

so I'm editing this:

Open washing is a marketing tactic that superficially associates a product with a widely trusted free and open-source (FOSS) software culture when the product itself does not provide freedoms that define that culture.

into

Open washing is a marketing tactic that superficially associates a product with a widely trusted open-source software culture when the product itself does not provide freedoms that define that culture. Hellfinder (talk) 12:32, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

Open source is basically synonymous with free software, I'm not aware of any licenses that meet the free software definition but don't meet the open source definition. You may be confusing source available with open source? RobotToaster (talk) 12:24, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

This appears to be… a long-unsettled debate far beyond the scope of this article. D-side (talk) 03:43, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Oh, thank you. does source available let consumers to compile applications and use their own created binary? if so, I think for this theme "source available" in more appropriate. Hellfinder (talk) 12:35, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

"Source available" is an umbrella term for everything for which the source code is published without providing freedoms defined by OSI, which do cover the ability to modify the software and redistribute modified binaries, for which being able to build the original binary is a practical prerequisite.

So in a mathematical sense, open source as defined by OSI is "sufficient" but not "necessary". Source available is technically neither, since its defining trait is falling short of OSI's standard and publishing some source code. Say, if actual source code for a product, that official binaries are built from, is published, but isn't buildable, is it still source code enough to consider the product "source available" or is that "closed source" at that point?

Definitions get very messy there. D-side (talk) 19:25, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

I feel like I should add that the free software movement started as a consumer rights movement https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt . Richard Stallman had a printer with a proprietary driver that couldn't be modified with an obvious fix. Being able to fix and improve software, and share those fixes with other consumers, is IMO very much a consumer rights issue. RobotToaster (talk) 15:57, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

It's a good angle to reexamine, I was focused more on what the general direction of these types of deception is. Pretending to be free software as defined by FSF I'd generally include under "open washing", except I'm not aware of any actual cases of this happening. So… I don't disagree, I guess. D-side (talk) 03:53, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

My intend for creating this page was to be a bare minimum. That violation of this could potentially endanger consumers, running a binary file that couldn't be created from the source code if available.

I should probably add another category that source code is available but illegible for humans. but this might be to far from consumer stand point!

I also believe that it's a consumer right to customize and redistribute their own version, to be really FOSS, however, I suggest to make another theme that doesn't let users to repair their own software!!! Hellfinder (talk) 12:44, 13 August 2026 (UTC)