WingNews logo WingNews
top | item 23801834

(no title)

KillerDiller | 5 years ago

“open source” was not a term, much less an industry term, before the OSI founders came up with it.

Source: I was in the industry and Free Software movement at the time.

More background: https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source...

discuss

order

chrisseaton|5 years ago

> “open source” was not a term, much less an industry term, before the OSI founders came up with it

I'm afraid this is not true.

The article you've linked to claims to have coined 'open source' in reference to software in 1998.

But for example here's one earlier written reference from 1996 http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html.

Here's a more general discussion about the false claim of the OSI to have coined it http://hyperlogos.org/blog/drink/term-Open-Source.

Another fact is that the USPTO rejected the OSI's attempt to trademark, because even they realised it was a simple descriptive term.

eitland|5 years ago

Wow! At first I thought you had found a place where these two words occurred after each other but it seems to have been used a few times I must admit I have been wrong.

It is so nice when someone takes the care to actually provide evidence for their claims.

That said, today I would still say OSIs definition has won and if anyone presented me with code and claimed it was open source and it didn't match OSIs standard then I personally would be disappointed.

But I probably won't claim anymore that they are stealing our term.

cxr|5 years ago

[deleted]