Many years ago, people had become used to calling a facial tissue by a company's name, Kleenex. If people were going to use the name Kleenex as a generic thing (a tissue), the corporation was going to lose the ability to protect their trademark. Every "tissue" could then be called a "Kleenex," and the value of the brand would be worthless. The Kleenex corporation went on a large advertising campaign to make everyone aware that they should say "Kleenex tissue," or "a tissue that is Kleenex" rather than just the name of their brand.

Today, we run the same risk with the term "Open Source." Many companies (especially two very large ones) claim that their products are either "Open Source" or "based on Open Source." If all software becomes "Open Source," how can people select the type of software they need?

In my mind, true Open Source software, while not giving you all the guarantees of the GPL, gives you the expectation of certain capabilities. Open Source should allow you to look at the source code to see how it works. It should allow you to fix parts of your source code if it needs it, and it should allow you to put it on every platform.

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