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As far as I know, the term "open source" was coined by the same people who were involved in founding OSI (though the OSI founders were a subset of the people wh

As far as I know, the term "open source" was coined by the same people who were involved in founding OSI (though the OSI founders were a subset of the people who first used the term). I'd be very curious to see examples of widespread use before 1997 or so. See the Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

EarlKing 6y ago
You are misinformed. The term "open source" has a history that predates the OSI by at least eight years, possibly longer (but I can only provide cites going back eight years). Please see my full reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26507460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26507460
- kube-system 6y ago
  For example, read the last line of this: http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html
chrisseaton 6y ago
> As far as I know, the term "open source" was coined by the same people who were involved in founding OSI I think this has been shown to be a bit of a myth. They claim to have coined it in 1998 but there's evidence of it in use in context without even needing to explain the idea by other people as far back as 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... Also, the fact is the USPTO wouldn't allow them to trademark it because it has a simple existing descriptive term.
- kube-system 6y ago
  It was a descriptive term used for intelligence (i.e. OSINT) well before 1998. Here's a book from 1976 using the term several times: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Human_intelligence/VE9seZBHwFcC?gbpv=1&bsq=open%20source https://www.google.com/books/edition/Human_intelligence/VE9s...