They don't own the trademark, but they could have, had the USPTO ruled differently. Much less exclusive terms, like Apple, have been trademarked. To many in th

They don't own the trademark, but they could have, had the USPTO ruled differently. Much less exclusive terms, like Apple, have been trademarked. To many in the open source community, myself included, when we hear open source we think of the open source initiative, opensource.org, and/or their logo. I'm not bothered by your viewpoint. Sure, we don't own the trademark, but to me, open source is and long has been the culture that emerged out of the early days of building an open source operating system (Linux, GNU/Linux, *BSD, etc). If you want "open source" to be a meaningless term, I'd first suggest trying to convince OSI to part ways with opensource.org. I don't think it's for sale, but maybe you could infiltrate the organization. Many have tried.