5 ms·

I disagree with some of their requirements for open source licenses, and will continue to call the code that I have open sourced over the years as "open source"

• busterarm 5y ago
  They occupy the term because they literally coined it, if you know your history.[1] OS came to us from the OSD, written by the OSI and after hot debate in the early days of what should and shouldn't be Free Software. It was specifically a reaction to the FSF and a rejection of that group's activism, which didn't fit what they were trying to do. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software (specifically the first section starting with End of the 90s)
  • kabdib 5y ago
    You are correct. I will retract my statement.
  • CogitoCogito 5y ago
    They didn’t coin the term: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/who-really-coined-the-term-open-source?s=r https://lunduke.substack.com/p/who-really-coined-the-term-op...
    • busterarm 5y ago
      From the perspective of popularizing and bringing it into mainstream usage, they surely did. Digging further is for extreme nitpickers. Gutenberg didn't "invent" the printing press either. Movable type dates back to 11th century China if you really want accurate attribution. Except for the purposes of the history of the modern world, Gutenberg's invention is most relevant/accurate. My internet usage started on university systems back in the 80s, along with BBS and usenet and I had never heard the term Open Source even once until 1998.
      • CogitoCogito 5y ago
        So they popularized (or maybe co-opted?) the term then. They didn't coin it. How is this nitpicking? Saying they coined the term is clearly false.
        • busterarm 5y ago
          Because as far as they know they did. It came up in meetings they had saying "what should we call this?" per your own link! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery
          • CogitoCogito 5y ago
            I'm not really sure what your point is anymore. If you agree that they were not the first ones to use the term, then we are on the same page. If you agree that open source was used as a term before the OSI came along and decided the define the term in a specific way, then we are in agreement.
            • busterarm 5y ago
              Not really in the context of software though it wasn't. Save for that one caldera announcement. General awareness of the term and its meaning starts with the OSI.
              • deleted 5y ago
                [deleted]
    • pie_flavor 5y ago
      When I see a bunch of disconnected posts, and not a percentage or some kind of number, I automatically assume those are all the examples the author could find. If you trawled through the entirety of usenet you could probably also find someone who capitalized the word Windows before Microsoft ever got hold of it. I disagree with Richard Stallman and the FSF about a lot of things, but I would never oppose their right to declare what is and isn't 'free software' (within the hacker community, anyway), regardless of how many people put the word 'free' before the word 'software' before he started talking about it.
  • mindcrime 5y ago
    FWIW, while I agree with the general sentiment of your post, I understand that there is some debate about whether or not OSI - strictly speaking - coined the term "Open Source" or not. That is, I've seen reference to citations of people showing use of the phrase "open source" that predate OSI by a decade or more. I never dug deeply into the issue because I don't consider it terribly important. I consider the OSD to be the effective, de facto (but not de jure) definition of Open Source regardless of this particular minor quibble. Still, it could matter it it ever came down to legal proceedings. But in everyday, colloquial terms, I think the OSD just "is" the definition of Open Source. Edit: Yeah, see @CogitoCogito's post for more on the "Open Source predates OSI" argument. The counter-argument, I suppose, is that they didn't "coin" the phrase in the strictest sense, but were possibly the first to rigorously define it and give it meaning within a specific context. Whether or not one accepts that argument, or a similar argument, is obviously open to debate.
  • tomnipotent 5y ago
    Except they didn't create the MIT license, or BSD, or Apache, or any of the software that built the movement. It's an advocacy group that tries very hard to insert itself into the conversation, and coining a term doesn't give them stewardship or ownership. I don't imagine the F/OSS ecosystem would be much different today had the OSD/OSI never come to be, unlike say the Apache Foundation or GNU projects.
• kazinator 5y ago
  The don't own the words "open" or "source code". They did not come up with the use of the word "open" in regard to computer software or standards. Any native or fluent English speaker could easily do that. The term "open standard" was used in the 1980's. In the area of Unix, specifically, there existed The Open Group for Unix Systems (later called X/Open Company) and The Open Software Foundation. These two merged in 1996 to form The Open Group. In the 1980's AT&T and Sun Microsystems collaborated on creating a standard GUI, and called it Open Look. All these people were corporate cronies trying to create a monopolistic software ecosystem that they control; they used the word "open" insincerely: the obvious ingredient that was lacking was access to source code by anyone who isn't one of the oligarchs. In that environment it was very easy for any random developer or user to come up with a lament along the lines "these Open This and Open That people have open standards and open systems and even software with the word Open in the name; the only ingredient missing is, oops, the actual open source code".
  • hn_version_0023 5y ago
    This is a fun little bit of history! As an aside, I was once employed as a systems administrator in the “Open Systems” group at my employer, in roughly 1999. In reality, I worked exclusively on SunOS/Solaris.