Literature Review #2
How I coined the term 'open source' is a piece by Christine Peterson, published on February 1, 2018. When Free Software Isn't Better is a piece by Benjamin Mako Hill, published on November 19, 2010.
In Peterson's piece, she explains how she introduced the term "open source" as an alternative term for "free software", in order to disambiguate between freedom of charge and the freedoms recognized by institutions such as GNU or the Open Source Initiative. She notes that she brainstormed a few ideas for the term, eventually settling on "open source" before pitching it to some more influential/technical friends. She then describes the meeting where the term was introduced and noted that it gained significant influence by being used in the Netscape Navigator project.
Hill, on the other hand, writes in support of the term "free software". He believes the term "open source" has come to mean an open development pattern which does not reflect the reality of many projects. He believes the community has become too idealistic in assuming that any piece of open source software is automatically better.
I disagree strongly with Hill's viewpoint - although the term "open source" has been conflated with open development, it is not a reason to stop using the term. A great example of this is Lua, a programming language developed at the PUC-RIO university and released under the MIT license. Although the maintainers have recently begun to release alpha and beta versions more regularly, they develop the software completely for their own use and release it to the public whenever they feel a new version is ready. This is widely recognized as an open source piece of software despite not being developed in an open manner (in particular, explicitly rejecting any outside patches).
Hill's argument to use the term "free software" instead of "open source" appears to exclusively rely on this strawman argument that "open source" must mean "openly developed" and therefore the term is wrong. Therefore, I would give his piece a 1/5 review.
As seen in Peterson's piece, the term was initially introduced only to disambiguate between cost-free software and software with source available (with the licensed freedoms attached). The distinction is necessary in order to create a category of software that respects user's freedoms. The fact that the term spread so quickly shows that a new term was needed to describe this type of software.
I would give Peterson's piece a 4/5 review, as it is a useful anecdote about the history of open source.
In Peterson's piece, she explains how she introduced the term "open source" as an alternative term for "free software", in order to disambiguate between freedom of charge and the freedoms recognized by institutions such as GNU or the Open Source Initiative. She notes that she brainstormed a few ideas for the term, eventually settling on "open source" before pitching it to some more influential/technical friends. She then describes the meeting where the term was introduced and noted that it gained significant influence by being used in the Netscape Navigator project.
Hill, on the other hand, writes in support of the term "free software". He believes the term "open source" has come to mean an open development pattern which does not reflect the reality of many projects. He believes the community has become too idealistic in assuming that any piece of open source software is automatically better.
I disagree strongly with Hill's viewpoint - although the term "open source" has been conflated with open development, it is not a reason to stop using the term. A great example of this is Lua, a programming language developed at the PUC-RIO university and released under the MIT license. Although the maintainers have recently begun to release alpha and beta versions more regularly, they develop the software completely for their own use and release it to the public whenever they feel a new version is ready. This is widely recognized as an open source piece of software despite not being developed in an open manner (in particular, explicitly rejecting any outside patches).
Hill's argument to use the term "free software" instead of "open source" appears to exclusively rely on this strawman argument that "open source" must mean "openly developed" and therefore the term is wrong. Therefore, I would give his piece a 1/5 review.
As seen in Peterson's piece, the term was initially introduced only to disambiguate between cost-free software and software with source available (with the licensed freedoms attached). The distinction is necessary in order to create a category of software that respects user's freedoms. The fact that the term spread so quickly shows that a new term was needed to describe this type of software.
I would give Peterson's piece a 4/5 review, as it is a useful anecdote about the history of open source.
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