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> So I can just decide that "Donald Trump is a space alien" actually means that I'm gonna go buy a burger today This is actually a rather good description of

by gpm 6y ago

> So I can just decide that "Donald Trump is a space alien" actually means that I'm gonna go buy a burger today This is actually a rather good description of what the OSI did. They took a term with plain meaning that was already in use and tried to define it to mean something else. Now people are getting mad when other people use the phrase "Donal Trump is a space alien" to literally mean that "Donald Trump is an alien from space". (I can only assume that people have previously said that Donal Trump is a space alien... there are a lot of strange people in the world after all)

vertex-four 6y ago
No, "open source" was not in common use at the time that OSI decided to use it. It's certainly not been used to mean anything except roughly OSI's definition until approximately two years ago, when Redis Labs decided to push the Commons Clause as being open source.
- gpm 6y ago
  It was in use, both in software and in the world at large (especially the intelligence community). I suppose how it depends how you define "common" but "people use the term in official announcements and assume everyone knows what they mean" seems common enough to me. - The OSI claims to have coined the term in 1998 https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source-software https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source... - Here is a use of the term, 7 times, and as the main object, from 1996 http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html - Here is a use of the term, as a proper noun, from 1993 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32/WoBvPB0U9Co/wXfpq5nEJTYJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.os.ms-windows.pro...
  - vertex-four 6y ago
    OK, now find me regular usage of "open source", applied to software, by more than one person trying to sell something, as meaning something different from the OSI definition between approx 2000 and 2017.
    - gpm 6y ago
      Why? That's not relevant to your claim that > "open source" was not in common use at the time that OSI decided to use it. But I suspect that if you search reddit/hn discussions in that period thoroughly you'll find a few cases... feel free if you want to waste your time.
      - vertex-four 6y ago
        You haven't shown that "open source" was in common use at the time OSI decided to use it (1988 is earlier than 1996), nor that it's been in common use as meaning something else when applied to software since then. One company trying to sell something doesn't make it common use, either - otherwise I could claim that my water is from a "free source" and declare that for all eternity referring to free source must mean it comes from my specific river.
        gpm 6y ago
        > (1988 is earlier than 1996) Oops, that was a typo on my part, the OSI claims to have invented it in 1998 not 1988, updated my original post here too See the source: https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source-software https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source...
        vertex-four 6y ago
        Ah, thank you. Either way, one company using the term once before that doesn't mean that it is a phrase in common usage. It also doesn't mean that the term hasn't changed to mean something else in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of developers since them, and using it to mean its plain meaning will only ever cause confusion, and potentially result in people doing things you didn't want with the source code. Epic, Microsoft, IBM, and hundreds of other companies, big and small, have been careful to avoid this issue specifically because there is an existing definition and it causes confusion.
        deleted 6y ago
teddyh 6y ago
> OSI […] took a term with plain meaning that was already in use and tried to define it to mean something else. If this is what happened, then they succeeded. Absolutely nobody is arguing in good faith that there exists a community of people using the term “open source software” to mean something specific to them, which is different from how the OSI defines the term. This community of people, if it ever existed, certainly does not exist anymore. It’s all corporate shills trying to argue in bad faith that they are allowed to call something “open source”. If it was really a confusing problem, they would call it something else; there are enough terms available. But it’s important to them to be able to fool people that it is OSI Open Source when in fact it isn’t, so they call it “open source”. And then we have the literal-minded people who claim that word definitions are a question of dictionaries, historical precedent or etymology. These people are helping absolutely no-one, except the aforementioned corporations. Language is defined by current general use, and in current language, “open source software” means the OSI definition.
- gpm 6y ago
  > If this is what happened, then they succeeded. Probably so > It’s all corporate shills trying to argue in bad faith that they are allowed to call something “open source”. I've seen basically 0 evidence of this. As far as I've seen it's primarily people like me arguing that you can't lambast people for using words to mean what they mean (even if the specific combination of words has a now common second meaning), and people who naively use the term without understanding that there's a hoard of rabid programmers who insist that the phrase "open source" has been imbued with special meaning and using it otherwise is to summon the devil. No corporate shill who has an understanding of the situation would be dumb enough to use the term and get into that fight.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    > people who naively use the term without understanding > No corporate shill who has an understanding of the situation would be dumb enough to use the term and get into that fight. These are not people who made an innocent mistake. The product owner of Defold is commenting in this very thread (without any disclaimers, I might add). They want people to believe that it is really OSI “open source”, when in fact it isn’t.

by gpm 6y ago

vertex-four 6y ago

No, "open source" was not in common use at the time that OSI decided to use it. It's certainly not been used to mean anything except roughly OSI's definition until approximately two years ago, when Redis Labs decided to push the Commons Clause as being open source.

gpm 6y ago
It was in use, both in software and in the world at large (especially the intelligence community). I suppose how it depends how you define "common" but "people use the term in official announcements and assume everyone knows what they mean" seems common enough to me. - The OSI claims to have coined the term in 1998 https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source-software https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source... - Here is a use of the term, 7 times, and as the main object, from 1996 http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html - Here is a use of the term, as a proper noun, from 1993 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32/WoBvPB0U9Co/wXfpq5nEJTYJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.os.ms-windows.pro...
- vertex-four 6y ago
  OK, now find me regular usage of "open source", applied to software, by more than one person trying to sell something, as meaning something different from the OSI definition between approx 2000 and 2017.
  - gpm 6y ago
    Why? That's not relevant to your claim that > "open source" was not in common use at the time that OSI decided to use it. But I suspect that if you search reddit/hn discussions in that period thoroughly you'll find a few cases... feel free if you want to waste your time.
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      You haven't shown that "open source" was in common use at the time OSI decided to use it (1988 is earlier than 1996), nor that it's been in common use as meaning something else when applied to software since then. One company trying to sell something doesn't make it common use, either - otherwise I could claim that my water is from a "free source" and declare that for all eternity referring to free source must mean it comes from my specific river.
      - gpm 6y ago
        > (1988 is earlier than 1996) Oops, that was a typo on my part, the OSI claims to have invented it in 1998 not 1988, updated my original post here too See the source: https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source-software https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source...
        vertex-four 6y ago
        Ah, thank you. Either way, one company using the term once before that doesn't mean that it is a phrase in common usage. It also doesn't mean that the term hasn't changed to mean something else in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of developers since them, and using it to mean its plain meaning will only ever cause confusion, and potentially result in people doing things you didn't want with the source code. Epic, Microsoft, IBM, and hundreds of other companies, big and small, have been careful to avoid this issue specifically because there is an existing definition and it causes confusion.
        deleted 6y ago

teddyh 6y ago

> OSI […] took a term with plain meaning that was already in use and tried to define it to mean something else. If this is what happened, then they succeeded. Absolutely nobody is arguing in good faith that there exists a community of people using the term “open source software” to mean something specific to them, which is different from how the OSI defines the term. This community of people, if it ever existed, certainly does not exist anymore. It’s all corporate shills trying to argue in bad faith that they are allowed to call something “open source”. If it was really a confusing problem, they would call it something else; there are enough terms available. But it’s important to them to be able to fool people that it is OSI Open Source when in fact it isn’t, so they call it “open source”. And then we have the literal-minded people who claim that word definitions are a question of dictionaries, historical precedent or etymology. These people are helping absolutely no-one, except the aforementioned corporations. Language is defined by current general use, and in current language, “open source software” means the OSI definition.

gpm 6y ago
> If this is what happened, then they succeeded. Probably so > It’s all corporate shills trying to argue in bad faith that they are allowed to call something “open source”. I've seen basically 0 evidence of this. As far as I've seen it's primarily people like me arguing that you can't lambast people for using words to mean what they mean (even if the specific combination of words has a now common second meaning), and people who naively use the term without understanding that there's a hoard of rabid programmers who insist that the phrase "open source" has been imbued with special meaning and using it otherwise is to summon the devil. No corporate shill who has an understanding of the situation would be dumb enough to use the term and get into that fight.
- teddyh 6y ago
  > people who naively use the term without understanding > No corporate shill who has an understanding of the situation would be dumb enough to use the term and get into that fight. These are not people who made an innocent mistake. The product owner of Defold is commenting in this very thread (without any disclaimers, I might add). They want people to believe that it is really OSI “open source”, when in fact it isn’t.