I never liked this term. Why is the term "Open Source" used to refer to publicly available information? Something like "PAT" would have been a better acronym: Public Available Information.
Do we refer to street dogs as open source dogs?
Do we refer to street dogs as open source dogs?
OS is a bureaucratic power term, which is of course quite old:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence#Histo...
2003: Public intelligence refers to sources of information freely available to the individual to be the basis for it's role as a responsible and critical citizen as part of a group or state.
Public Intelligence is associated with the application of Open source intelligence (OSInt) to empower the public in its dealings with all forms of organization, and most especially government. It is an applied variant of Collective intelligence.
It was inspired by the 1978 Colby book:
"Intelligence must accept the end of its special status in the American government, and take on the task of informing the public of its nature and its activities as any other department or agency. . . . By far the most effective manner of accomplishing the task . . . is by letting the public benefit directly from the products of intelligence, its information and assessments. " --former DCI William Colby, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA, Simon & Schuster, 1978, pp. 459-60.
I put it together for your viewing pleasure: https://elib.at/index.php?title=Public_Intelligence_-_Glossa... enjoy
edit:typos
I assume your line of thinking is that you associate "Open Source" with software freedom (warm fuzzy feelings) & dislike that being tainted by stalkers & military espionage. Leaving aside that OSINT pre-dates the software term, I think it's quite fitting given the context of the very capitalist-/corporate-friendly "Open Source" licensing trend subsuming the original corporate-unfriendly/copyleft "Free Software" movement. The former enables the military-industrial complex by taking advantage of publicly available data, the latter enables the corporate world by taking advantage of publicly available code.
informaTion?
> Do we refer to street dogs as open source dogs?
No, but we don't call them Public Available Dogs either.
1. Stalkers stalking people
2. Actors spreading misinformation on X about wartime atrocities
I can see why they want to brand their stuff “Open Source” which sounds like a good thing.
Well, why not?
"Source" has long referred to available information. In fact, you probably won't have to read HN long before you encounter a "source plz"-type meme, intended to mean something akin to: "Please point me to the available information that supports your claim."
"Open" has long referred to available information that is accessible to users. "Open source[code]" uses "open" in the same way.
PAT works too but I'm not sure it communicates anything meaningfully different. As far as I can tell, they are trying to communicate the very same thing. Is your reaction, perhaps, because you are accustomed to "open source" being used in the software sense?
> Do we refer to street dogs as open source dogs?
Dogs haven't typically been seen as information, so, for all practical purposes, probably not. But if we want to change that, sure, why not? Language doesn't have feelings. It doesn't care.
> Is your reaction, perhaps, because you are accustomed to "open source" being used in the software sense?
Yes exactly. I feel like a different term should be used here, because open source is already a widely established term in software.