But the fact is, if it was a phrase in current use, you wouldn't just have one or two examples. There would be thousands. Where are all the other mentions of Caldera's "Open Source" software?
The reality is this: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22+open+sourc...
Can you spot where the OSI appeared? The reason they couldn't get their trademark is because they had been so successful in promoting the term.
Though, I am curious now who came out with something around 1980. Might have to dig into that one.
In the body it is used (hyphens not added)
2x: “open-source” not followed by the word code.
3x: “open-source code”.
1x: “open source code”.
Moreover it’s not just a throwaway phrase but a label they are using for their model
Caldera believes an open source code model benefits the industry in many ways.
They continue to be extremely interested in DOS and support our open-source technology direction
Caldera’s OEM and Channel Partners can utilize the open-source code models for DOS and Linux to create
(I love it when I can copy and paste old arguments ;))
> But the fact is, if it was a phrase in current use, you wouldn't just have one or two examples. There would be thousands. Where are all the other mentions of Caldera's "Open Source" software?
It doesn't have to be extremely popular to be in use. The truth of the matter is that there wasn't much "open source" or "source available" software. The other truth of the matter is I have finite patience for trawling through old mailing lists looking for the term open source.
> The reality is this: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22+open+sourc....
As you yourself note there is a bump dating to... 1975... the truth of this is the OSI used a term already in use and made it more popular, not that they invented it.
> Can you spot where the OSI appeared? The reason they couldn't get their trademark is because they had been so successful in promoting the term.
No, it was because the term is merely descriptive. It would also be because the term was already in use if the PTO noticed that (but they often don't - and I haven't tracked down the documents to check if they did).
That's outright nonsense. Just for comparison, Linux had already been around for the better part of a decade by that point, Red Hat had incorporated in 1993, and GNU/FSF might as well have been wrapping up the tour for their fifth album. To say that there wasn't much of the stuff in 1998 is either either ignorance, delusion, or both.
Open source software projects were a bajillion years old by that point, but nobody was calling them that, what with the term not yet having been invented and all. They were (begrudgingly!) "free software" until it was decided that mozilla.org would be a thing.
The phrase open source software has an extremely well-known meaning. Uses like this, which fraudulently claim to be open source software even though they fail to comply with the normal definition as used for over 20 years, is simply an exploitative fraud.
If they want to join the open source community, they would be very welcome. But trying to say that they're part of a community they're not is not okay. It's especially dangerous to the people who are not familiar with the law and might make big decisions for themselves based on falsehoods.
Today, trying to use that phrase in the way they're using it is deceptive.
- The OSI claims to have coined the term in 1988 https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source....
- Here is a use of the term, 7 times, and as the main object, from 1996 http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html
- Here is a use of the term, as a proper noun, from 1993 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.os.ms-windows.pro...
On a separate note the OSI's original mission statement was (https://web.archive.org/web/20000408035603/http://opensource...)
> The Open Source Initiative's mission will be to own and defend the Open Source trademark, to manage the www.opensource.org resources, to develop branding programs attractive to software customers and producers, and to advance the cause of open-source software and serve the hacker community in other appropriate way
Which they since abandoned because "there is virtually no chance that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office would register the mark "open source"; the mark is too descriptive" (and one suspects because the mark was already in use in trade of software, see the xent.com link above) https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...
They have no special rights to the term open source. I wish people (including the OSI) would stop pretending otherwise. You can think that it's a good idea to use their definition without relying on falsehoods.