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Wednesday, November 16, 2005

I was on "Open Source."

Is the name Open Source Media too close to Open Source Radio? (You know, I was on Open Source Radio a couple weeks ago, the night the Alito nomination was announced. You can listen to that show here if you want -- Cass Sunstein, Charles Fried, and Eric Muller are also on.)

UPDATE: Open Source Radio complains (incredibly meekly):
In May we named our show “Open Source” and we named our non-profit production company “Open Source Media.” In fact, this used to be our URL until we decide to scrap the “net” and look for an “org.” But here’s the actual legal-type description of what we are:
A joint production of Open Source Media Inc. and the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, Open Source is presented by WGBH Radio Boston and distributed by Public Radio International (PRI).

What this means is that we are seven people in a rented office with, incidentally, a rather bold mouse who does not yet have a name. We make a radio show four times a week that uses bloggers as local and topical experts; this show is distributed to public radio stations by Public Radio International, and to truckers and early adopters by XM satellite radio.

So this morning I got an email from a listener with the following subject header:
did someone steal your name?

Hm. A company that used to call itself Pajamas Media now calls itself Open Source Media, which is — scroll down to our legal notice — kind of exactly what we call ourselves. They’ve collected $3.5 million in venture capital, and, to celebrate their re-naming of our already-named name, they’re holding an event at the Rainbow Room.

Imagine if you were the venture capitalist who forked over this kind of money and now know, on day one, that they mismanaged step one.

Okay, I'm not going to talk about OSM for a while. I'll observe a circumspect silence out of sheer pity... the sheer pity of "a Berkeley house whore." Ah, listen to the podcast if you don't know what I'm talking about.

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