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I don't disagree with you, but the term "open source" predates the OSI by quite some time and was in common usage to mean "source code you could read" rather th
by cromulent 12y ago
I don't disagree with you, but the term "open source" predates the OSI by quite some time and was in common usage to mean "source code you could read" rather than binaries.
OSI may (and have) redefine it, but it is historically founded that it meant readable code delivered with the binaries rather than binaries only.
- schoen 12y agoI've sometimes heard that, but I don't have a personal recollection of hearing the term used that way before. Do you happen to know of particular examples of people using "open source" that way before 1998?
- zorked 12y agoThat's what you would interpret if you heard someone say "open source" but that would have been two words put together, not a term. The OSI people invented the term.
- cromulent 12y agoI can assure you they didn't. Edit: Check this 1993 document by NASA: "National security and national competitiveness: Open source solutions; NASA requirements and capabilities" https://books.google.fi/books?ei=8YMJVZ6-IIOhPaj8gMAO&id=zYQ4AQAAIAAJ&dq=%22open+source%22&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22open+source%22 https://books.google.fi/books?ei=8YMJVZ6-IIOhPaj8gMAO&id=zYQ...
- kragen 12y agoAs you can see, that isn't talking about software.
- cromulent 12y agoMy earliest memory of it was circa 1990 when we had problems getting source code out of escrow for a system, and we were advised to make sure the next system was open source. Edit: Check this 1993 document by NASA: "National security and national competitiveness: Open source solutions; NASA requirements and capabilities" https://books.google.fi/books?ei=8YMJVZ6-IIOhPaj8gMAO&id=zYQ4AQAAIAAJ&dq=%22open+source%22&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22open+source%22 https://books.google.fi/books?ei=8YMJVZ6-IIOhPaj8gMAO&id=zYQ...
- jordigh 12y agoLike I replied in my blog, that document is about open source intelligence, a completely unrelated term. They're not talking about computers at all.
- cromulent 12y agoOK, maybe, it was the first one I came across. Well, you can claim they invented the term in 1998 and I guess I can't convince you otherwise unless I dig up some old documents, which is unlikely. Anyway, FWIW, we used the terms "open source" and "open source code" way before that and it was widely understood. I don't have any reason to make that up.
- jordigh 12y ago> Anyway, FWIW, we used the terms "open source" and "open source code" way before that and it was widely understood. I don't have any reason to make that up. Perhaps it was your personal jargon. I don't see any evidence that it was widespread before 1998. I think it's more likely that your memory is failing, and OSI's campaign was so successful that they really convinced you that you always called it "open source". It has been close to two decades, after all. We can forget.
- jordigh 12y agoIf "open source" predates OSI, it must have been a very underground word. It doesn't appear before 1998: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=open+source&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1990&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=0&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Copen%20source%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3BOpen%20Source%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bopen%20source%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BOpen%20source%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=open+source&ca... My take on the matter: http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-forgotten-about-open-source/ http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-forgot...
- schoen 12y agoThanks for writing that, it's quite similar to what I wanted to write (though probably more humorous).
- kragen 12y agoYou are mistaken. The term was not used with reference to available software source code before February 3, 1998; it had a mostly unrelated meaning in espionage.