Google recently launched the Open Usage Commons (OUC) foundation to offer open source projects “support specific to trademark protection and management, usage guidelines, and conformance testing,” according to the OUC’s website. Seems sort of bland, right? Well, maybe.
Depending on who you are, you either hate OUC or you love it. On the “hate” side seem to be IBM and the Linux Foundation on the record, and others off. On the “love” side seems to be just Google, though a rising chorus of experienced open sourcerors like Shaun Connolly and Adam Jacob have suggested that maybe, just maybe, this isn’t the end of open source as we know it.