“Openwashing” is a term used by proponents of community open-source software against commercial open source companies. The goal is to shame the companies into changing their business model as well as to prevent the business model in the first place. The claim is that commercial open source companies may be providing open-source software, but are not following proper open source principles, and hence are abusing the term open source to mislead users of their software. The claimed abuse is that companies are tapping into the goodwill associated with the term open-source software built up community open projects without actually being community open-source software.
Proponents of community open-source software assert that software should only be called open-source software if it is communally developed and owned. This does not leave room for commercial vendors who tightly control the development of software they make available under an open source license, who do not accept community contributions unless the contributor transfers their copyright to the vendor, and who remain the sole owner of the software they build their business on. Commercial open source vendors typically maintain this control to ensure maximum flexibility in what they charge customers for as well to keep competitors away.
The openwashing claim reflects a cultural war in the open source community at large, going back all the way to the definition of open-source software. The current and accepted definition of open-source software by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) defines open-source software as an artifact only: Software becomes open-source software if it comes with a license that gives users specific rights, most notably the right to use the software, modify it, distribute it modified or not, all free of costs. This definition does not say anything about how the software is being developed. The process may be open (community open source) or closed (commercial open source); the open source definition has no opinion on this.
Short-term beneficiaries of successful openwashing shaming of companies are open source enthusiasts who assert their moral convictions as well as user companies, in particular large cloud providers (AWS, Google, Microsoft), who are trying to ensure that commercial open source vendors keep providing new versions of their software for free.
Long-term, everybody loses by shaming companies into not following commercial open source strategies. There simply will be less innovative open-source software, as the venture capital typically required to get such businesses off the ground finds other ways to finance software companies.
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