451 CAOS Theory 
A blog for the enterprise open source community
Open source fashion?! Nah.
Raven Zachary, December 11, 2007 @ 8:54 pm ETDuring my daily crawl for all things open source and Linux related today, I came across a press release from ZenTrend claiming to be the world’s first ‘open source fashion design platform.’ See: The World Just Got Flatter — Silicon Valley E-Tailer Launches First Open Source Fashion Design Platform: iStyler
Intriguing. I called the press contact listed on the release for further details (she was very nice on the phone, by the way). Was this a new vertical open source initiative in the fashion industry? Would this new platform help connect fashion designers with textiles suppliers and a global customer base or possibly enable fashion designers to better manage their business, all supported by a common open source code base developed collaboratively by like-minded fashion companies? Nah.
In summary, ZenTrend is using the term to refer to the ability for the general public to vote online for the best fashion concepts (that would be a user survey, no?) I don’t think ZenTrend’s iStyler would meet any of the criteria of the OSI ten-point open source definition.
My favorite text from the press release:
The open source credo may not match the prevailing ethos of the fashion business, but mass collaboration has been an unspoken part of this company’s business model from the beginning.
Indeed. 
I’ll stop now and let others far more clever and vicious take it from here.
Comments (8) Categories: Software
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Have you seen Burda’s “open source sewing”? It’s a little closer. http://www.burdastyle.com/
[...] Open source fashion?! Nah. [...]
[...] Open source fashion?! Nah. [...]
[...] Open source fashion?! Nah. [...]
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Seems like a pretty pointless concept that would not be feasible or remotely relative to the fashion industry.
Open source fashion?!!!!!!!!!!! sounds ridiculous..
jan