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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

People forget that the OSI and the people behind it neither own, nor invented, the term 'open source.' They want to give you the impression that they do and they did, but they don't and they didn't.

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On the other hand, standards and consensus are important to know what's going on. See the endless meaningless "organic produce" label landscape.

False.

In the application to software, Bruce Perrens most definitely did define ther term, based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and the Free Software Foundation's Three Freedoms definition of Free Software, in June 1997:

https://opensource.org/docs/osd

https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines

https://perens.com/2017/09/26/on-usage-of-the-phrase-open-so...

The term was not previously used with regard to software, though the intelligence community have used the phrase "open sources" to refer to unclassified information.b

Indeed. But to be more precise: Christine invented the term and Bruce precisely defined it based on the DFSG.

> The term was not previously used with regard to software

This is just not a true thing to say. See my other replies for examples from before 1997.

I don't see a good reason to view it as akin to a power-grab. It's profoundly unhelpful when terms are diluted and muddied. We should use the OSI's definition not because they say so, and not for legalistic reasons like trademarks, but because it's important to have meaningfully precise language.

It's right that when a thread is submitted of a project falsely claiming to be open source, the HN community unfailingly tears it to shreds. We don't want the term to be cheapened into becoming meaningless. I don't see that the origins of the term are relevant.

Personally I tend to capitalise, I typically use Free and Open Source software to be more clear that I'm referring to free software as defined by the FSF, and open source as defined by the OSI. It's unfortunate that I've found this to be necessary, to close the door on obtuse misuse of these terms.

Ideally they would have picked a term that they could prove to have invented and could have trademarked, then there wouldn't be an issue.

I suppose so, but the term is typically understood in the software community as a pretty precise term of art, and people shouldn't try to muddy it.

It's still better than free software, which invariably makes the uninitiated think of freeware.

Who did?

I don't know - not sure anyone does.

Christine Peterson claims to have invented the term in 1998.

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

But at least this much is not true - we can see it being used, in context, at least as far back as 1996. I think people involved in this project at the time say it was a common term back then as well, but I can't find a reference for that now.

http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html

And they certainly don't own it - they wrote a whole article on their own website still available about how they don't own it!

https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...

The Caldera announcement you’re referring to does not use "open source" as a term. They write "open (source code) model", not "(open source) (code model)". It’s an important distinction.

And yes, Christine indeed invented the term, and folks from OSI gave it the current meaning by clearly defining it.

I'm afraid this just isn't true. Ask other people around at the time:

> I joined Caldera in November of 1995, and we certainly used "open source" broadly at that time. We were building software. I can't imagine a world where we did not use the specific phrase "open source software". And we were not alone. The term "Open Source" was used broadly by Linus Torvalds (who at the time was a student...I had dinner with Linus and his then-girlfriend Ute in Germany while he was still a student), John "Mad Dog" Hall who was a major voice in the community (he worked at COMPAQ at the time), and many, many others.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-i7au3...

So where are all the examples on public mailing lists and Usenet of them using this? I'm afraid I simply don't trust people's hazy memories of conversations from years ago.

> So where are all the examples on public mailing lists and Usenet of them using this?

Here's one

http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html

Also - even the USPTO rejected their claim as a trademark.

One. The same one you already posted. Where are the thousands of examples of this common usage?

Rejected after they'd made the term popular.

How many examples do you need to prove that something existed? Isn't one enough? When you see a fossil of a dinosaur skeleton in a museum do you say 'well hang on are there any more or just one?'

And it was rejected because it was a simple descriptive term. You can't take ownership of a simple descriptive term.

Bottom line facts are: OSDI don't own it - that's a fact - and they didn't use it first - that's a fact.

I didn't claim it didn't exist so your strawman is irrelevant. If there was only a single dinosaur skeleton in existence I certainly wouldn't be claiming they were common animals.

The fact is it was barely used until the OSI introduced it as a term at which point it became popular. You seem to have a personal problem with that.

> But at least this much is not true

Yes it is. Just because a phrase was used once or twice in some obscure post in the past, doesn't mean that someone can't come up with it independantly.

> a common term back then as well, but I can't find a reference for that now.

Because it wasn't a common term at all. If it was, you'd be able to find thousands of examples of usage, from all over the early web and (especially) Usenet. How many examples do you actually have. Two or three?

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