I don't think that 'disingenuous' means that someone is actually *lying* to
you. But it does mean that what is involved is at least a case of what in
classical logic and rhetoric is called the 'fallacy of special pleading'.
In addition there can be a certain degree of inexperience involved as well
as an inclination to assume a benevolent and open stance on the part of
others you are dealing with -- a noble attitude that, I have found, in
business leads to particularly deep bouts of bitterness and depression.
Yes, I am in fact amused. The following fanciful news article keeps
popping into my head:
"IDEs-Are-Us Corp announced today a brilliant new strategy to employ the
efforts of thousands of highly skilled software developers to contribute to
a fundamental component of their IDE products. Leveraging the power and
enthusiasm of the open source community, and controlling content and
direction of new development through a newly formed "software foundation",
IDEs-Are-Us has essentially acquired that community as unpaid developers
for its product line. 'Yeah, this is great', said Mike Marketeer, VP of
Open Source Collaborations. 'This is one of the most significant impacts
on our bottom line you can imagine. We sure wouldn't want to have to *buy*
this kind of effort. And of course we need the control in order to ensure
our product schedules and quality. These guys even seem to *like* the
arrangement.' Other companies are now looking at adopting the new strategy
by creating foundations of their own. As an unnamed source from Big Blue
Iron and Software remarked, 'This is even better than just sending sofware
development offshore.' "
How can you *not* be amused? It is, in fact, brilliant. And it's not
necessarily even *bad*! I do think that perhaps this is how the "open
source model" has to change in order to be truly viable on a long-term
basis in genuine business. The "purely socialistic model" it started out
as just won't work over time. And a "purely capitalistic model" means just
taking something completely private. This has both advantages and
disadvantages, and it's not even obvious how you could *legally* do that
with something that started out as open source. The proposed foundation
appears to be a direct approach to solving that problem: How do we
"semi-privatize" what used to be wide-open and public? Well, you (a)
create some "open" organization, (b) get people to turn over their prior IP
claims to that organization, and (c) ensure the required degree of control
of the organization. You really have to admire the innovative thinking
here. And this approach might indeed be of benefit to all -- depending on
exactly what the arrangements are. I do believe that an approach of
putting on a mask, hoisting the Jolly Roger, and saying 'Hey, give us all
your property rights.' might be going just a bit too far in the absence of
some tradeoffs. 
I don't think I'll crosspost any of my thoughts. I don't really have any
standing in this case, and it hasn't been my intention to "start trouble",
but I haven't been able to resist making a few observations.
ยทยทยท
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Gary H. Merrill
Director and Principal Scientist, New Applications
Data Exploration Sciences
GlaxoSmithKline Inc.
(919) 483-8456