Corpen Source

Clopen Source refers to Open Source projects that have adopted practices that Close off uses or rights. There is a special category of Clopen Source that feature a Corporate Entity like Sun, Microsoft, Novell or any large company, supporting the Open Source software. This blending of Corporate and Open Source software should be labeled as such as Corpen Source.

Novell is currently the corporate patron of the Mono project. Mono could be summarized as Dot Net Framework Everywhere. That is the making the Dot Net Framework available on non Windows OS but it will also be available on Windows. If Mono remains successful, this cross platform capacity would make it preferable to Microsoft's version. So one can see how Novell interest in this project and as the corporate sugar daddy it is clear Novell will call the shots. As such, Mono is a Corpen Source project.

Firefox which is spun out of Mozilla is a Corpen project of Mozilla. But in addition to this Google provides significant resources in exchange for access. The integration of Google search and antiphishing consolidates Firefox as a Clopen Source project.

In addition to Corpen Source there are Corpen Standards projects. Microsoft submitted C# before ISO and ECMA, but as Microsoft provides all the resources it is clear C# is a Clopen Standard. Sun started to submit Java to ISO and ECMA but withdrew and released large portions under the GNU GPL instead. No doubt this was an attempt to get Java accepted as an Open Standard while retaining control. Having failed this they made Java into a Clopen Source project.