pajamahadeen

November 22, 2005 10:58 AM

A stunning victory for bearded, radical software programmers and snarky liberals everywhere The conservative blogging company Open Source Media has changed their name back to "pajamas media". [Official Press release about this - ed.]
posted by delmoi (23 comments total)

This is a real shame, because my company, Open Source Waffles, was really starting to take off, too.
posted by wakko at 11:01 AM on November 22, 2005

There's a public post at their site [ocm.org] addressing the name change.
posted by crysflame at 11:04 AM on November 22, 2005

They got their publicity, they're happy.
posted by IronLizard at 11:11 AM on November 22, 2005

Huh.
posted by delmoi at 11:14 AM on November 22, 2005

Judging by the posts, it seems like both sides were pretty reasonable about things once they understood the others' position. Nice that it didn't have to get ugly.
posted by unreason at 11:14 AM on November 22, 2005

I removed the sentence about the press release and updated the link (and my name is ed!)
posted by mathowie at 11:37 AM on November 22, 2005

pajamas ( Brit. pyjamas) plural noun a suit of loose pants and jacket or shirt for sleeping in : a pair of pajamas | [as adj. ] ( pajama) pajama bottoms. • [in sing. ] ( pajama) a pair of loose pants tied by a drawstring around the waist, worn by both sexes in some Asian countries.

they've basically just relabeled themselves as Pants media. what a great idea. cut out the middleman and just call yourself 'pants'
posted by rodney stewart at 11:50 AM on November 22, 2005

Some history from previously anonymous commenter "Dennis the Peasant."
posted by brownpau at 12:03 PM on November 22, 2005

rodney stewart: for the benefit of us Yanks you might've wanted to explain that in Britain "pants" also means "fucked up."

Then again, you mightn't've.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 12:11 PM on November 22, 2005

rodney stewart: for the benefit of us Yanks you might've wanted to explain that in Britain "pants" also means "fucked up."

Shit! Now my name makes even less sense.
posted by PantsOfSCIENCE at 12:21 PM on November 22, 2005

Judging by the posts, it seems like both sides were pretty reasonable about things once they understood the others' position. Nice that it didn't have to get ugly.

And that's good, although the bigger problem was that the term "open source" is used for open source software (which is what the real open source media is about).
posted by delmoi at 12:24 PM on November 22, 2005

I know they're the evil nasty right wingers and gosh we're supposed to hate them so bad, but it looks like they were completely reasonable and flexible in a situation where they didn't have to be. Good on them.

Dennis the Peasant, incidentally, seems like an entitled douchebag.
posted by Simon! at 12:25 PM on November 22, 2005

And that's good, although the bigger problem was that the term "open source" is used for open source software (which is what the real open source media is about).

True, although that's a term I've seen misused on both sides of the political divide. For example, I remember Al Gore during the 2000 election, having a website which was proclaimed to be "open source". I don't think that there was any ill-will intended, either there or here, I think it's just that Open Source has become a marketing buzzword that some PR-types use without thinking. Like "paradigm", or "synergy", or "leveraging your core skill set".
posted by unreason at 12:32 PM on November 22, 2005

I know they're the evil nasty right wingers and gosh we're supposed to hate them so bad, but it looks like they were completely reasonable and flexible in a situation where they didn't have to be

No, they're high-status idiots with access to dim venture capitalists. Firstly, it would have taken two seconds to type "Open Source Media" into Google and discover that the brand is in use by another company. Secondly, when they were universally called out about this, they posed some legalese on their site about "OSM^tm Media Inc" being their trademark, and that Chris Lydon had "graciously given up" the opensourcemedia.net domain. Of course, he didn't, and that domain re-directs to radioopensource.org. When this was called out as bullshit, they re-wrote their post to state that they had talked with Chris Lydon and he agreed to give up the domain. That, of course, was bullshit.

But even apart from that, they're using the .org TLD which used to be reserved for non-profit organizations, as well as using the moniker "Open Source" when the site has more restrictions than a shrink-wrapped copy of Office 12. So, they've managed to piss off both the Open Source community and the blogging community with their anti-open source content licensees, as well as make themselves look tremendously stupid in the process - "Hey guys! We're re-launching our just-launched BlogtasticContentAdvertising service. Whoohoo, time to "live"blog from the Rainbow Room again! Who wants to do some lines off Atlas Shrugs's tits?" Give me a fucking break.

It's like 1999 all over again, except far less exciting.
posted by SweetJesus at 12:47 PM on November 22, 2005

I gotta go with the idiot side. Claiming that you're going to "reinvent media" (Agin? Y'all whippersnappers been at pa's kool-aid agin?) and then not "really knowing" that using the open source label is pathetic. Either you're such a luddite that you had no idea millions of people use open source to refer to something different, in which case you can't 'reinvent' anything except maybe the wheel, or you were just trying to cash in on a buzzword, which explains why you like to throw around 'reinvent' when referring to a blog aggregator.

Idots.
posted by lumpenprole at 3:00 PM on November 22, 2005

Of course, they can probably spell 'idiots' so that puts them one ahead of me....
posted by lumpenprole at 3:00 PM on November 22, 2005

And Roger L. Simon is still lying, blaming the awful, abandoned name on a branding agency when it was actually hashed out in his own blog's comments.
posted by Scram at 4:05 PM on November 22, 2005

scram-- that is interesting! I don't get it, what's this need they seem to have to constantly distort things?
posted by cell divide at 4:11 PM on November 22, 2005

Credibility? The only thing bloggers really have going for them, that they aren't hiding behind big media? Thanks Scram, that was some great sleuthing. Good to know.
posted by Hildegarde at 4:33 PM on November 22, 2005

Woosie Wankaaas!
posted by Mr Bluesky at 4:42 PM on November 22, 2005

Three letter urls are not easy to get anymore.

It is like 1999 all over again. (But it wasn't even exciting then.)
posted by mrgrimm at 5:04 PM on November 22, 2005

It wouldn't be nearly as funny if it wasn't that they already borrowed $5mil. on this project.

Changing the name now is what they would call a 'Bad Sign'.
posted by Balisong at 8:25 PM on November 22, 2005

Publicity or no, this can't be anything other then embarrassing. Good luck getting any more VC funding, these guys are idiots.
posted by delmoi at 10:04 PM on November 22, 2005