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> "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." > "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "who is to be master - th
by FeepingCreature 4y ago
> "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
> "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "who is to be master - that's all."
- Through the Looking-Glass, slightly adjusted.
The whole goal of calling it "open source" is to take advantage of the positive connotations associated with the term. But the positive connotations come from software published under the dogma, and are inseparable from it.
(You can see the same twists and turns in Elastic's FAQ, where they desperately try to twist language so that "open" and "source" are as close together as possible without outright making contact. Guess nobody told them they can just use the word under their own definition, or as the rest of the world calls it, "lie".)
- blowski 4y agoAnd yet. Outside of HN, most people I know refer to Elasticsearch as open source.
- FeepingCreature 4y agoDo they even know the terms?
- blowski 4y agoProbably not by the definitions you're using, or at least they don't care about them. Either way, this is one of those age old debates about descriptive vs prescriptive language that will have absolutely no impact whatsoever. People will continue to post things they call open source that you disagree are open source, and you will continue to moan about it.
- _benedict 4y agoNone of these facts are relevant for how people use language. You may lament that people are beginning to use a word differently, but you cannot stop it and you cannot declare it authoritatively wrong. You can only lament and exhort. Language evolves.
- ddevault 4y agoLanguage /does/ evolve. However, it's still dishonest to use an established term in a manner contrary to the broadly understood definition. Furthermore, the rationale for an unorthodox definition of open source is generally forwarded by those with a financial interest in their unorthodox definition, and in so doing they are asking others to work against their own interests by surrendering the mutually agreed upon rights associated with the term. The orthodox view on open source is a useful and broadly understood shorthand for a certain enumeration of rights, the withholding of those rights disproportionately serves a certain group of interests at the expense of others, and disregarding these problems and using the terminology incorrectly in spite of them is willfully dishonest.
- _benedict 4y agoI disagree that everyone broadly understands the same thing as you from the phrase “open source”
- FeepingCreature 4y agoDeclaring words wrong is part of how language evolves.