Jumping the licensing shark

Posted Mar 24, 2023 17:10 UTC (Fri) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
In reply to: Jumping the licensing shark by Wol
Parent article: Jumping the licensing shark

Please stop using "open source" to refer to what literally everyone else calls "source available." Misuse of terminology is confusing and detracts from your argument.

(You may disagree with the dominant definition of "open source." That is irrelevant. You can use the terminology that everyone else uses, or you can be misunderstood. Pick one.)

Jumping the licensing shark

Posted Mar 24, 2023 18:38 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> to refer to what literally everyone else calls "source available."

Well, I can't remember ever seeing the term "source available". And while I don't see the term much any more, "open source" was quite common a while back.

If you're going to give Open Source a special meaning - like "Complies with the Open Source definition", then make it stand out and capitalise it! After all, we have "free software" (which we don't care for), and "Free Software" which we most definitely do.

Open Source is exactly the same, and I guess "source available" is an attempt by the Open Source guys to replace the term "open source". "open source" means exactly that - the source is open. "Open Source" contains loads of overtones, it IS special, so MAKE it special. And people were using "open source" long before they were using "source available" - after all, open source LONG predates the FSF - quite probably predates RMS (I don't know the relevant dates).

Cheers,
Wol

Jumping the licensing shark

Posted Mar 25, 2023 0:43 UTC (Sat) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

Language changes over time. What the phrase meant in 1985 is irrelevant today.