undefined | Better HN

0 pointsjordigh12y ago0 comments

No. Please read my link above. This is thing #2 in my link above. Christine Petersen coined the term. OSI was then formed under this term.

There is an unrelated "open source intelligence" older term, about how to spy on people using publicly-available sources, but nobody called software "open source" before OSI. Eric Raymond confirms as much:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html

0 comments

3 comments · 1 top-level

pbhjpbhj12y ago· 2 in thread

In the abstract of the same text by Raymond, http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral...:

>"By mid-1996 I thought I was beginning to understand. Chance handed me a perfect way to test my theory, in the form of an open-source project that I could consciously try to run in the bazaar style. So I did—and it was a significant success." //

OSI started in 1998 yet here is Raymond saying he did an open-source project in 1996. Not only that be he was copying an established style of software authorship which was already open source. Whilst the wording may not have been widely used, perhaps not at all, until 1998 open source was already a thing. OSI tried to create a tightly defined word but they created usage of the term to cover what was - as we see above - already a thing. The thing that existed didn't and doesn't fit neatly in to the OSD and nor should it. Usages change as well but here I think those who [it seems] coined the term and set it free used it in a different way to some of the community from the start.

It would be interesting to do a survey of the HN crowd to see what they consider the term "open source" to mean.

jordighOP12y 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.

pbhjpbhj12y ago

I 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.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse