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0 pointspbhjpbhj12y ago0 comments

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.

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jordigh12y ago

I 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.

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