@jeffcliff If "where open source happens" was their primary selling point, then their claim wasn't that they were "open source", rather that their proprietary forge was where "open source" happened.

Unfortunately, most people can't wrap their head around such sort of subtlety and on reading that statement would make the assumption that github is "open source".


rms did write about 2 cases of such similar things happening in the past;
Companies also made announcements that give the impression that a program is “open source software” without explicitly saying so. For example, one IBM announcement, about a program that did not fit the official definition, said this:

As is common in the open source community, users of the … technology will also be able to collaborate with IBM…

This did not actually say that the program was “open source,” but many readers did not notice that detail. (I should note that IBM was sincerely trying to make this program free software, and later adopted a new license which does make it free software and “open source”; but when that announcement was made, the program did not qualify as either one.)

And here is how Cygnus Solutions, which was formed to be a free software company and subsequently branched out (so to speak) into proprietary software, advertised some proprietary software products:

Cygnus Solutions is a leader in the open source market and has just launched two products into the [GNU/]Linux marketplace.

Unlike IBM, Cygnus was not trying to make these packages free software, and the packages did not come close to qualifying. But Cygnus didn't actually say that these are “open source software,” they just made use of the term to give careless readers that impression.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html