2 ms·
You are of course open source software existed for a long time before it was called that, way back to the early 1960's. People called it free software for a lon
by jordigh 12y ago
You are of course open source software existed for a long time before it was called that, way back to the early 1960's. People called it free software for a long time. And not just Stallman called it that, even the BSDs did and still do, despite hating RMS and all he stands for (GNU, GPL...)
ESR edits his texts a lot, and CATB came out before 1998. I don't know if I can track down a first edition of CATB and see what term ESR used here, but I bet it wasn't "open source". Note how he hyphenates it, according to his recommendation in the thing I linked.
- pbhjpbhj 12y agoI cut-pasted and reused his hyphenation, I noted it well. He uses "open-source software" and just "open source". Did I err in this regard? That aside, it doesn't matter if he wrote the line last week about making an open source project in 1996, it's recognition that open source per se (as opposed to the name) started prior to OSI and their OSD. It was an established thing that they tried to straight-jacket in to a particular definition.
- jordigh 12y agoI was pointing out his hyphenation to point out how it's something that nobody does, just like almost nobody writes e-mail anymore instead of email. The term seemed new at the time, so esr thought he needed special recommendations on how to use it. And yes, I agree again with you, open source existed for a long time before OSI. It was and is called free software. All that OSI attempted to do was provide a more business-friendly synonym for free software, but their message seems to have gotten distorted, and people seem to think that open source is something different from free software. It was never meant to be different.