> open has a number of meanings that are useful, but have been overwhelmed by the concept of open source. How is Open Source not open? You have the source, and

> open has a number of meanings that are useful, but have been overwhelmed by the concept of open source. How is Open Source not open? You have the source, and it is open (you can modify, hack, and distribute it). Hence, “Open Source”. What’s wrong with it? > but open standards used to be the meaning. "ethernet is this, here's how you talk to it, but we're not going to write the code for you" (i'm not claiming that ethernet was originally an open standard, just using that as an example of what an open standard means) Open standards are not better than Open Source, if you go that way. Most of them are not free, for a start. > and hardware manufacturers used to include blueprints/schematics (for repair, or for interconnection, for example) and commercial software vendors would show you the source code, snip That is a fantasised past. Some companies did; most companies did not. Just as nowadays.