Open source gets complicated | InfoWorld [Video]

Global politics, chip wars, and the ever-present confusion of managing AI source code. It’s been a tough week for open source.

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Oh, for the days when “open source” was simply the business-friendly version of “free software.” When we could make believe that the Open Source Definition (OSD) crafted for a world of packaged software shipped on CDs or other physical media would apply equally well to AI or cloud. When the categories of “us” and “them” were clear, and “them” always meant the bad guys.

Wasn’t 2023 awesome?

Of course, open source has always been much more complicated than some would like to suppose. But this week that complexity exploded, revealing a roiling mess of geopolitics, chip wars and, of course, AI messiness. Rather than a testament to the inherent weakness of facile understanding of open source, what is emerging from this mess is a reminder at how complicated yet resilient open source …