Openwashing is the practice of marketing a product or content as open source and openly licensed when it is actually proprietary.[1]
History
editMichelle Thorne, Mozilla's Director of the Webmaker Program, first defined openwashing in 2009 as "to spin a product or company as open, although it is not."[2]
The term is based on the concept of greenwashing, or the practice of marketing products as "green," creating the perception that they are environmentally friendly, even though they are not.[3]
Types of openwashing
editOpen Source
editOpenwashing was originally used in the context of open source software and information technology. As more technology moved to the cloud, vendors began to position their products as "open." This led to questions over how "open" was defined and whether there should be an evaluation tool for openness.[4]
Open Education
editWith the growth of the open education movement, openwashing has been used to describe the work of various actors in the open education content marketplace.[3] In 2011, David Wiley used openwashing to describe the company OpenEd Solutions, which offered a service developing open resources for blended schools, when they were in actuality a blended learning consulting firm and were not promoting open education.[5]
Open Data
editOpenwashing has also been observed in the open data movement. Christian Villum for the Open Knowledge Foundation characterized openwashing as "data publishers that are claiming their data is open, even when it's not--but rather just available under limiting terms."[6] The 2015 Open Data Barometer report offered a definition of openwashing in the context of governmental data as "where governments release selective information without providing an environment for people to use it."[7] The 2016 International Open Data Conference further defined this definition as "providing selective information without having an environment where citizens can freely use that data--whether for building businesses or for holding government to account."[8]
Responses to openwashing
editIn response to openwashing, many open communities have more clearly defined "open" with definitions and sets of criteria.[9]
Twitter users also use the hashtag #openwashing to call out practices that they consider to be openwashing.[10]
http://hackeducation.com/2014/11/16/from-open-to-justice
https://webfoundation.org/2016/10/openwashing-anyone/
https://www.theengineroom.org/when-the-openwashing-is-over-protecting-the-right-to-know/
http://parisinnovationreview.com/articles-en/when-the-open-wash-comes-with-open-everything
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162517304407
Reasons for open washing: https://blog.okfn.org/2018/10/25/open-washing-digging-deeper-into-the-tough-questions/
References
edit- ^ "openwashing.org". openwashing.org. Retrieved 2018-10-05.
- ^ "Openwashing – Michelle Thorne". michellethorne.cc. Retrieved 2018-10-05.
- ^ a b Weller, Martin (2014), "The Victory of Openness", The Battle For Open, How openness won and why it doesn't feel like victory, Ubiquity Press, pp. 1–26, ISBN 9781909188334, retrieved 2018-11-02
- ^ "How to Spot Openwashing - ReadWrite". ReadWrite. 2011-02-03. Retrieved 2018-11-02.
- ^ "Openwashing – the new Greenwashing". iterating toward openness. 2011-07-27. Retrieved 2018-11-02.
- ^ ""Open-washing" – The difference between opening your data and simply making them available". Open Knowledge International Blog. 2014-03-10. Retrieved 2018-11-02.
- ^ "Report – From promise to progress | Open Data Barometer". opendatabarometer.org. Retrieved 2018-11-02.
- ^ "#openwashing…anyone?". World Wide Web Foundation. Retrieved 2018-11-02.
- ^ Pomerantz, Jeffrey; Peek, Robin (2016-04-12). "Fifty shades of open". First Monday. 21 (5).
- ^ "#openwashing hashtag on Twitter". twitter.com. Retrieved 2018-11-02.