Open Source Term Origins
Commenters debate the historical origins, first uses, and popularization of the term 'open source', citing ngrams, pre-1998 references like 1996 press releases, 1987 documents, and earlier instances while discussing its association with the OSI in 1998.
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Great find!Sounds like this term became popular in the 1970s. That was a while ago :)
You are right. Looking at ngram it seems to have appeared around 2016. But it was even around in 1970s but perhaps in a different context. So it’s perhaps better to say that he popularised it.
Yes, although the term hadn't yet been invented:)
No, it hasn't, it's pretty much always been used for both (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32271400 which contains references to the figurative use as far back as 1769.)
Wow. The Term has been in use since the early 1900's
The term wasn't really used before the mid 1900s. It's a relatively recent term.
According to Wiktionary, it's been used since at least 2001. I was similarly confused.
Can you provide any historical primary sources that show that it was widely used like this before it gained it's current meaning over 20 years ago?
The word didn't even exist in common lexicon 25 years ago or you are an authoritative source and need to update wikipedia and stackexchange...
Your point being? Post found the term used in a 1996 press release, a little more than a year before the "most reputable claims of [re]-invention". A single email quoted from a blog post with a grand total of 1756 reads proves that the term was "commonly used" in 1998 when OSI started popularizing the term? In fact, the fact that the claims are commonly regarded as "reputable" indicates that the term actually wasn't commonly used at that point.Flagging you f