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No other legal mechanism?No other legal mechanism?Posted Dec 4, 2006 15:20 UTC (Mon) by pdundas (subscriber, #15203)Parent article: What is open source?
What can be done about any future abuse of the term "open source" is not clear, however. There is no trademark, so there is no legal mechanism available to shut down such claims. This is not true - at least not in jurisdictions where there are laws about truth in advertising, misrepresentation, and passing something off as something it is not. If there is a clear and widely understood definition of "open source" (and I believe that this is strongly arguable), then if something is clearly NOT open source, anyone advertising it as such may be committing a criminal offence. Whether this particular gem stretches the definition of open source beyond breaking point is the sort of thing you could ask a procurator fiscal, prosecutor, or similar official, and ultimately a court to decide.
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