I’m only offering ideas on how to solve an existing problem of unclear words and unreasonable expectations, not asking anyone to do anything. We can continue to use “open source”, and suffer the consequences and continue to complain. I think the problem the author called out will continue to get worse. Plus, as pointed out elsewhere in this thread, OSI co-opted this term from others who had already been using it differently before them.
It would be way better if the term was clearly a name, rather than something that tries to gate-keep the meaning of general words. That would make it so you assume you need to look it up, and not assume what it means. It would be better if “open source” didn’t have other, easier to assume and understand meanings that came both before and after OSI’s ideas. If we don’t want to use a name, then it would be better if the phrase used a word or two to capture the ideas in OSI’s version. Using “open source” to mean something with restriction is a desire to have your cake and eat it too. This is in essence a marketing slogan that wants to rest multiple license limitations on the positive-sounding word “open”, without having to admit there are parts of the license that limit some kinds of openness and freedom in certain ways (under the possibly true belief that such limitations are the maximum balance of openness for everyone). Both term “open source” and “free software” suffer from this problem, hoping to establish a slogan out of two words that most clearly imply a meaning that is unfortunately antithetical to the movement. This is just a choice, and we could choose to be clear, or choose to fight the tide.
