Last week OSM (Open Source Media) launched to what some are calling an odd start. Most notably naming a controversy has ensued with Christopher Lydon's public radio show Open Source, a production of Open Source Media, Inc..

This is kind of entertaining.

Christopher Lydon runs a NPR program called "Open Source Radio." It is produced by Brendan Greeley, who ran the podcasting panel at BlogNashville.

They have a trademark on the term "Open Source Media."

This is a bit troubling. Open Source is a generic term referring to a type of software. I can see how in the context of the radio dial a show called "Open Source Radio" might be unique, but you are taking a generic term and recontextualizing it. If you go back to the original context (I.E. the net) you're going to cause confusion and conflict. This is particularly true if you are trying to be the only guy on the entire Internet calling yourself "Open Source Media" or publishing podcasts with that name. Not to mention the fact that trademarking that term kind of misses the point.

It was, of course, inevitable that someone else would come along on the Internet and try to make something else called "Open Source Media." As it turns out, its Glen Reynolds and his merry band of Republican bloggers. (I don't think his project is designed to be partisan but it remains to be seen how it will pan out.) Reynold's "Open Source Media" also happens to have nothing at all to do with software, and at the outset apparently had some unfriendly copyright terms associated with it as well, which kind of misses the point.

So of course a battle ensues between "Open Source Media" and "Open Source Media" over who is allowed to use that name, not on the radio, but on the net, where the term is in common use and really has little to do with anything either of these people are doing. You'd think, you know, these guys would have bumped into each other at BlogNashville or online at some point before all this went down. Whats more, one wonders what the hell either FM radio and "Carnival of trying-to-increase-the-Google-Rank-of-my-partisan-allies" has to do with real many to many media. The end result is a lot of people trying very hard to look savvy and failing very miserably at it.

Read this article on the Open Source Media launch party. Its worth it.