The arguments against the viability of open source in the enterprise have mostly disappeared, but with mainstream adoption of open source comes a number of companies seeking to unjustly capitalize on the success of open source. Much like the practice of greenwashing, openwashing is when a business claims to be open source, use open source, or support open source when they aren’t actually an open source company. There are a lot of people in the business world who still don’t fully understand the meaning of open source, and they are in a position to be taken advantage of by these openwash companies.
The Open Source Initiative provides the best explanation of open source, but the open source industry is still buyer beware because it is often hard to tell how much a company embraces open source until after the contracts have been signed. There are a few projects stepping up to address this, such as the Open Source Scorecard and the Openness Index, but until this industry matures, there will still be people looking to take advantage of others.
