FoRK

> The phrase "Open Source" is not necessarily just the summation of the constituent words "open" and "source". "Open Source" is a unique concept with a unique meaning... and the de-facto definition of that concept, is the OSD[1].

The use of the phrase "Open Source" predates the very _existence_ of the OSD by years[1], so it's somewhat laughable to claim that people are "trying to muddy the waters and being intentionally disingenuous" for simply not complying with the OSI's attempt to retroactively redefine the phrase to mean something other than the conventional and obvious meaning.

[1] The OSI was formed in February of 1998. The OSD had been drafted 9 months prior, in mid 1997. If, as claimed, the meaning of the phrase "Open Source" sprung forth from the ether with the OSD, then why, pray tell, is it dead easy to find uses prior to 1997 in which people are obviously referring to the ability to see the source-code and obviously _not_ referring to the ability to exploit it commercially?

For instance, here's a post from 1993 on comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32 (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32/WoBvPB0U9Co/wXfpq5nEJTYJ):

> If a developer wants money for shareware,
paying the fee should automatically grant the user a copy of the source
code for their personal use. Restrictions could prohibit modifying and
redistributing binaries, but should allow distribution of "deltas" for
bug fixes, etc.

> Anyone else into "Source Code for…

There are occasional applications of the adjective "open" to the noun "source" or "source code" in Usenet articles going back to the 1980s, but it wasn't a "term", even after Adam posted this article to FoRK with the abbreviated subject line. Reading in 2019, you might be tempted to parse the headline "CALDERA. ANNOUNCES OPEN SOURCE CODE MODEL FOR DOS" as containing the subtree "((OPEN SOURCE) (CODE MODEL))" but it seems clear to me that it was intended as "((OPEN (SOURCE CODE)) MODEL)".

So, no, I don't agree that it was "a term that was already in use". When Eric circulated the mail to get support from free-software leaders to change the name from "free software" to "open source", I read it, I read the generally positive responses, and I read Stallman's furious response, which I believe was the next day. I don't recall anyone claiming the term was "already in use". And I was an administrator of FoRK a few years after that message was posted; my first post was probably http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/nov98/0351.html. So I'm not just trying to reconstruct the history based on fragmentary documents. I also have my own memories.

We also have this graph, which shows pretty conclusively that the term appeared suddenly in 1998 after Chris Peterson invented it: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=open+source+software&year_start=1960&year_end=2010&corpus=15&smoothing=0&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Copen%20source%20software%3B%2Cc0

You can see from…

>The terms "free software" and "open source" have a specific meaning in the software ecosystem. The former is defined by the Free Software Definition and the latter by the Open Source Definition, respectively published by the FSF and OSI. These definitions both require that the software is available for commercial use without restriction, among other things.

Problem: The OSI did not coin the term 'open source'. OSI partisans claim that Christine Peterson coined the term at a strategy meeting in Palo Alto on 3 February 1998. However, the term and the concept was well known prior to that. Martin Tournoij does a decent enough job of collecting prior citations [1] that go all the way back to 1990. All the OSI did was take an existing philosophy, scribble some new restrictions in crayon, and called it Open Source(tm)(c)(pat. pending).

Honestly, though, I do love it when this comes up. It gives me the opportunity to irk new guys telling them that Lyle Ball, head of public relations at Caldera, has an earlier citation than the OSI in the form of a press-release announcing Caldera OpenDOS[2][3]. :D

[1] https://www.arp242.net/open-source.html

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

[3] http://ftp.uni-bayreuth.de/pc/caldera/OpenDOS.701/license.txt

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26504021

The problem is exclusive containment. Folders/directories are an example of hierarchical exclusive containment. The author suggests avoiding the problems associated with this by getting rid of the hierarchy.

However, the author is onto something: storing functions in a database. Using the file system results in exclusive containment (file can't be in two different directories - link don't count) that a database can avoid.

If you are lost, think of Gmail's tags with nesting. You can still have the hierarchy but data can be "located" under different tags. A lot of times the problem is using the file system as the back end. Python's modules, for instance, do not inherently enforce exclusive containment; the file system imposes this constraint.

I had a chat with Jeff Bone a year ago after I read his partially-related rant here:
http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20091109/054578.html

I wish I could paste everything he said to me in here; he pointed me to a lot of examples of good file system / graph database examples that get a lot of these things right. Quick further reading list: Original ReiserFS design, BeFS design, FluidDB, LUFS, and Tannenbaum's design for the directory services and file system of Ameoba.

It's a programming language + standard library. The particular feature of REBOL that makes is special is the ease with which you can define your own DSL within the limits of the REBOL lexer. This allows libraries for specific purposes, such as making UIs or parsing text, to be very succinct yet readable.

A bit Lisp-y but with a stronger focus on what in Lisp would be macros.

When first published, REBOL was way ahead of its time, having explicit support for a variety of well-designed DSLs before the term DSL even existed (or at least, was widely known). The downsides of REBOL always were its closed source commercial model and the lack of a strong community as a (probable) result therefore, plus the fact that by default, the UIs made by the built-in UI library look absolutely horrible, which isn't a big problem really but helps scare newcomers away.

That one first downside seems to have been taken away now.

A nice REBOL showcase is, IMHO, it's oneliner page:

http://www.rebol.com/oneliners.html

Plus the (excellent) associated commentary on some mailing
list:

http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20091109/054578.html

> No, open source means the same thing it's always meant since the term was first coined. See the Open Source Initiative's Open Source Definition: https://opensource.org/osd.

Problem: The OSI did not coin the term 'open source'. OSI partisans claim that Christine Peterson coined the term at a strategy meeting in Palo Alto on 3 February 1998. However, the term and the concept was well known prior to that. Martin Tournoij does a decent enough job of collecting prior citations [1] that go all the way back to 1990. All the OSI did was take an existing philosophy, scribble some new restrictions in crayon, and called it Open Source(tm)(c)(pat. pending).

Honestly, though, I do love it when this comes up. It gives me the opportunity to irk new guys telling them that Lyle Ball, head of public relations at Caldera, has an earlier citation than the OSI in the form of a press-release announcing Caldera OpenDOS[2][3]. :D

[1] https://www.arp242.net/open-source.html

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

[3] http://ftp.uni-bayreuth.de/pc/caldera/OpenDOS.701/license.txt