“open source” means nothing more than what those two words clearly express: source available
Perhaps it is my long experience with OSS, but to me "open" expresses freedom to use and modify not just to peruse. Some source available licenses are in more of a gray area here. But I've also seen companies claim that they are open source just because their code is on GitHub, even though their license doesn't allow you to do anything with that source code.
all lawmakers and law enforcement, all journalism, all business people, and the general public.
Most of these people have no idea what source code is, so open source means nothing to them, unless someone explains it to them.
It would be way better if the term was clearly a name, rather than something that tries to gate-keep the meaning of general words
I don't disagree with you, but the term "open source" is already widely used (moreso I think than "free software" which IMO is even worse given the ambiguity of the word free in English). And I would argue that it is a term of art in the software industry. It isn't the only case where general words are used for specific meanings in our industry, by far. Coming up with a new term would require a lot of effort to teach everyone already familiar with open source a new term, rewriting a lot of literature about OSS, and probably some rebranding. And then, even if the new term does catch on, as others have mentioned, companies will probably still use the new term to incorrectly refer to things that don't meet the definition, for the same reasons they do now.
Would it be better to have a more specific name, maybe something that could be trademarked? Probably. Is it worth changing the term at this point? Probably not.
Comments
Perhaps it is my long experience with OSS, but to me "open" expresses freedom to use and modify not just to peruse. Some source available licenses are in more of a gray area here. But I've also seen companies claim that they are open source just because their code is on GitHub, even though their license doesn't allow you to do anything with that source code.
Most of these people have no idea what source code is, so open source means nothing to them, unless someone explains it to them.
I don't disagree with you, but the term "open source" is already widely used (moreso I think than "free software" which IMO is even worse given the ambiguity of the word free in English). And I would argue that it is a term of art in the software industry. It isn't the only case where general words are used for specific meanings in our industry, by far. Coming up with a new term would require a lot of effort to teach everyone already familiar with open source a new term, rewriting a lot of literature about OSS, and probably some rebranding. And then, even if the new term does catch on, as others have mentioned, companies will probably still use the new term to incorrectly refer to things that don't meet the definition, for the same reasons they do now.
Would it be better to have a more specific name, maybe something that could be trademarked? Probably. Is it worth changing the term at this point? Probably not.