When a large number of people use a word to mean something, that's what the word means. My definition of "public domain" doesn't trump their definition, just be

When a large number of people use a word to mean something, that's what the word means. My definition of "public domain" doesn't trump their definition, just because I'm a lawyer or a programmer or somehow more specific. Neither does James Boyle's or Larry Lessig's. The first group to latch onto "open source" was OSI. "Open" had been a buzzword in computing for a whole generation before. The media didn't eat up ESR's line because OSI had a definition or a license list. Initially, it had neither. The media ate it up because of the software, which hadn't been called by that name before. Nobody's abusing anything here but OSI's sense of entitlement. Comment above is right: there's no exclusive right to the term.