Organic vs. Non-Organic Open Source, Revisited  There’s been
some controversy generated over my use of the terminology of
“Organic” and “Non-Organic” Open Source. Asa Dotzler noted that
it wasn’t Mozilla’s original intent to “make a distinction
between how Mozilla does open source and how others do open
source”. Nessance complained that he didn’t like the term “Non-
Organic”, because it was “raw and vague – is it alien, poison,
silicon-based?” and suggested instead the term “Synthetic Open
Source”, referencing a paper by Siobhán O’Mahony, ” What makes a
project open source? Migrating from organic to synthetic
communities”. Nessance referenced a series of questions and
answers by Stephen O’ Grady from Red Monk, where he claimed the
distinction between the two doesn’t matter. (Although given that
Sun is a paying customer of Red Monk, Stephen admits that this
might have influenced his thinking and so he might be
“brainwashed” :-) .  So let’s take some of these issues in
reverse order. Does the distinction matter?