Now open source sex?

Yesterday I blogged about the erosion of the term "open source". My premise was that the meaning of open source is being confused in the industry by certain proprietary vendors, and in the general public by a nonsensical reference to the term by a new radio talk show.

Now this morning, while looking for a podcast in the iTunes store to help ease a long travel day tomorrow, I find this: a podcast called "open source sex" by sex educator Violet Blue (no, I was not searching for anything in particular). What could this possibly mean? It's the most ridiculous thing I've seen all week.

I'm at a loss to explain this, so any insights from readers would be appreciated!

My original post also received a few comments. Kevin Gerich explored the name of the public radio show in more detail, and makes the case that I was comparing apples and oranges. That was just my point. Unless the content of the show, in whatever form, is available to the public for modification, improvement, and rebroadcast in another form, then it's not open souce. I don't know that it isn't, but I'm willing to bet not.

On the other hand, I have a friend who is a senior producer for a public radio talk show. She knows nothing about the IT world, and I know very little about public radio (but that doesn't seem to stop me from commenting about it). She just sent me an email that set me straight on the issue. Her take on the title of the radio show revolves around "source" in a journalistic sense, and implies that the content for the show will be gathered in a more open manner. So really, it has nothing to do with what I'm thinking of as open source. As she tells me, "I should also say that once, in a poetry workshop, a friend had written a compelling poem called "Chaos Theory" which was about a complicated love triangle and made no reference to the chaos theory of science. There was a guy in the class who was a science buff and could not let go of the fact that there was something called chaos theory that was a specific, scientific idea (complete, I believe, with equations and proofs and hypothese and other intimidating scientific la-la-la.) For him the whole poem was wrecked by that distraction.  Maybe the radio show is doomed to that same fate and people who live and work in digital-land [my translation: the IT world]  won't be able to listen."

Actually, I think it's a case of believing one's industry to be the center of the universe, when clearly it's not :) So let's just appreciate that our terminology is appealing to the mainstream and leave it at that. I will be the first to admit that this thread is more philosophical than practical. So now on the the more serious stuff...