5 ms·

"Open source" is not a term that developed naturally through normal language development. It's a term of art specifically created to have a particular meaning.

"Open source" is not a term that developed naturally through normal language development. It's a term of art specifically created to have a particular meaning. Your argument is roughly equivalent to this one: "I can call this random cereal Cheerios, because language evolves and neither you nor General Mills decides how people use language."

_benedict 4y ago
Nope, it isn’t special. Indeed your example is why companies try very hard to prevent words from changing meaning. Google for instance no longer means “search with Google” but to search the internet for something, with Google or some other service, and history is littered with such examples - including ones that became so prevalent they lost their trademark protection.
- mikebenfield 4y ago
  I don't understand why you think this is a good counterexample. Google is still trademarked. If I make a search engine and say, "You can use my search engine to Google things," I'm probably in the wrong both legally and ethically.
  - _benedict 4y ago
    Open source isn’t trademarked, and probably isn’t possible to trademark. So trademark status isn’t relevant here, only the change in usage.
    - mikebenfield 4y ago
      You're literally the one who made the analogy of "open source" to trademarks, and now you're trying to shoot down my explanation of why your analogy doesn't work by saying trademark status is irrelevant... Good grief.
      - _benedict 4y ago
        No, you brought up Cheerios, and I brought up a counterexample to your claim that such invented terms occupy some special status where they don’t or shouldn’t change meaning. I then mentioned loss of trademark protection to further evidence that such words change meaning.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  To my understanding[0] Google is still trademarked. [0] https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/google_retains_its_trademark_though_the_name_is_used_as_a_verb_appeals_cour https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/google_retains_its_t...
  - _benedict 4y ago
    Yep, I didn’t use them as an example of a company that has lost their trademark, only that in common usage often means something different to its original intent.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      Fair enough. I'd argue that Google pretty much does just mean "use Google".
jotaen 4y ago
The term “open source” might have originated with a particular meaning in mind, but I think OP’s point is that the term developed a life on its own thereafter. “Cheerios” is a made-up product name, and without knowing the definition of it, one couldn’t tell what it means. (I had to look it up, in fact.) In contrast, “open” and “source” are generic words, and in combination they can be used and understood without knowing any of the FOSS history. That’s actually how I was introduced to the term: I always understood “open source” to just literally mean “the source code is openly accessible” – no more, no less. Even after having learned about the FOSS aspect later on, I continued to interpret “open source” in that literal sense. Since this debate is a bit … heated, let me add that I’m not interested in making any general claims with my statement – I’m rather sharing my own perception to contribute a data point to how language can be used and understood differently, depending on where people come from.
- mikebenfield 4y ago
  But "open source" is also a made up name, just like Cheerios. Nobody was using the term "open source" before it was deliberately created in Palo Alto. The fact that you thought you knew what it meant without being given a definition, and what you thought was incorrect, might be considered a weakness of the term. But it doesn't change the nature of the name.
  - jotaen 4y ago
    > The fact that you thought you knew what it meant without being given a definition “Open source” can be legitimately used as generic term, and as such one doesn’t need any definition at all to use the term in its colloquial sense. Imagine someone were to arbitrarily define the term “free lunch” to mean something very specific, instead of the naive interpretation of “a meal at noon that you don’t have to pay for”. Only because they’d claim and publish their definition doesn’t make it universal from then on, regardless of whether the combination of those words had been used somewhere else before. If you think of patent law, for example, it’s not for nothing that you can’t claim a trademark on generic terms. The reasoning behind that stems from the very same problem. I agree with you that it probably would have been better if the FOSS movement had established a more specific term for what they meant. (Like: “FOSS”, for example.) But – to put it bluntly – that’s a home-made problem on behalf of the FOSS movement, and not mine.

_benedict 4y ago

Nope, it isn’t special. Indeed your example is why companies try very hard to prevent words from changing meaning. Google for instance no longer means “search with Google” but to search the internet for something, with Google or some other service, and history is littered with such examples - including ones that became so prevalent they lost their trademark protection.

mikebenfield 4y ago
I don't understand why you think this is a good counterexample. Google is still trademarked. If I make a search engine and say, "You can use my search engine to Google things," I'm probably in the wrong both legally and ethically.
- _benedict 4y ago
  Open source isn’t trademarked, and probably isn’t possible to trademark. So trademark status isn’t relevant here, only the change in usage.
  - mikebenfield 4y ago
    You're literally the one who made the analogy of "open source" to trademarks, and now you're trying to shoot down my explanation of why your analogy doesn't work by saying trademark status is irrelevant... Good grief.
    - _benedict 4y ago
      No, you brought up Cheerios, and I brought up a counterexample to your claim that such invented terms occupy some special status where they don’t or shouldn’t change meaning. I then mentioned loss of trademark protection to further evidence that such words change meaning.
robertlagrant 4y ago
To my understanding[0] Google is still trademarked. [0] https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/google_retains_its_trademark_though_the_name_is_used_as_a_verb_appeals_cour https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/google_retains_its_t...
- _benedict 4y ago
  Yep, I didn’t use them as an example of a company that has lost their trademark, only that in common usage often means something different to its original intent.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    Fair enough. I'd argue that Google pretty much does just mean "use Google".

jotaen 4y ago

The term “open source” might have originated with a particular meaning in mind, but I think OP’s point is that the term developed a life on its own thereafter. “Cheerios” is a made-up product name, and without knowing the definition of it, one couldn’t tell what it means. (I had to look it up, in fact.) In contrast, “open” and “source” are generic words, and in combination they can be used and understood without knowing any of the FOSS history. That’s actually how I was introduced to the term: I always understood “open source” to just literally mean “the source code is openly accessible” – no more, no less. Even after having learned about the FOSS aspect later on, I continued to interpret “open source” in that literal sense. Since this debate is a bit … heated, let me add that I’m not interested in making any general claims with my statement – I’m rather sharing my own perception to contribute a data point to how language can be used and understood differently, depending on where people come from.

mikebenfield 4y ago
But "open source" is also a made up name, just like Cheerios. Nobody was using the term "open source" before it was deliberately created in Palo Alto. The fact that you thought you knew what it meant without being given a definition, and what you thought was incorrect, might be considered a weakness of the term. But it doesn't change the nature of the name.
- jotaen 4y ago
  > The fact that you thought you knew what it meant without being given a definition “Open source” can be legitimately used as generic term, and as such one doesn’t need any definition at all to use the term in its colloquial sense. Imagine someone were to arbitrarily define the term “free lunch” to mean something very specific, instead of the naive interpretation of “a meal at noon that you don’t have to pay for”. Only because they’d claim and publish their definition doesn’t make it universal from then on, regardless of whether the combination of those words had been used somewhere else before. If you think of patent law, for example, it’s not for nothing that you can’t claim a trademark on generic terms. The reasoning behind that stems from the very same problem. I agree with you that it probably would have been better if the FOSS movement had established a more specific term for what they meant. (Like: “FOSS”, for example.) But – to put it bluntly – that’s a home-made problem on behalf of the FOSS movement, and not mine.