It’s kind of facile to imagine a conspiracy actively working to “convince” people to do the wrong thing. I’ve never seen any evidence of such a thing.
In reality, I think it’s an emergent property of software development, where very few people can make a living using the platonic ideal of a free license. People start projects that are free, then see that they can’t pay the rent, while users (including companies) keep asking for more support and more feature work (for free, naturally).
So the projects evolve, and get closer to business, both to attract contributions from developers who are paid (by big business) and to position project owners to actually make some money.
I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, or if we even need to make such a judgment, but I think the phenomenon is easily explained without resorting to some kind of shadow campaign on behalf of business.
There are 2 different "PR" campaigns that happened.
The first is Open Source vs Free Software. There's nothing shadowy about it. It's right there in the open. You can see who finances OSI. You can read what have to say about making Open Source business friendly and branding a new term vs "Free Software".
And you can see how shortly after they started promoting the term it took off in popularity. They didn't invent the term, but they definitely popularized it.
The 2nd PR campaign is OSI convincing devs that only software that only software that uses an official blessed license is pure.
In reality, I think it’s an emergent property of software development, where very few people can make a living using the platonic ideal of a free license. People start projects that are free, then see that they can’t pay the rent, while users (including companies) keep asking for more support and more feature work (for free, naturally).
So the projects evolve, and get closer to business, both to attract contributions from developers who are paid (by big business) and to position project owners to actually make some money.
I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, or if we even need to make such a judgment, but I think the phenomenon is easily explained without resorting to some kind of shadow campaign on behalf of business.