ZDNet’s Dana Blankenhorn posted a story about the Pentaho hiring of key developers from the Weka Project. But he, like his CNet colleagues, still insists on calling the event an acquisition of an open source project. Sigh. Geeze, when Linus went and worked at Transmeta, would anyone have said that Transmeta acquired the Linux project?

Dana, give me two minutes of your time, and then give your readers the straight goods on the difference between a true open source community (which can’t be acquired), and a group of developers working in the open source arena, who can be hired or given a creamy milkshake. So, while the Weka developers now work for Pentaho, some other group of developers could come along and start with the Weka code (as it’s GPL licensed) and continue to develop/maintain it as a fork from whatever the Pentaho folks are doing.

I know you understand the difference. Now let’s spread the message about the value of a true open source community: let’s do it for the children (and your readers).