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3.2 KiB
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22 lines
3.2 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>open source</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../O.html" title="O"/><link rel="previous" href="open.html" title="open"/><link rel="next" href="open-switch.html" title="open switch"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">open source</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="open.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">O</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="open-switch.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="open-source"/><dt xmlns="" id="open-source"><b>open source</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> [common; also adj. <span class="firstterm">open-source</span>] Term coined in March 1998
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following the Mozilla release to describe software distributed in source
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under licenses guaranteeing anybody rights to freely use, modify, and
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redistribute, the code. The intent was to be able to sell the hackers'
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ways of doing software to industry and the mainstream by avoiding the
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negative connotations (to <a href="../S/suit.html"><i class="glossterm">suit</i></a>s) of the term
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“<span class="quote"><a href="../F/free-software.html"><i class="glossterm">free software</i></a></span>”. For discussion of the
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follow-on tactics and their consequences, see the <a href="http://www.opensource.org" target="_top">Open Source Initiative</a>
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site.</p></dd><dd><p>Five years after this term was invented, in 2003, it is worth noting
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the huge shift in assumptions it helped bring about, if only because the
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hacker culture's collective memory of what went before is in some ways
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blurring. Hackers have so completely refocused themselves around the idea
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and ideal of open source that we are beginning to forget that we used to do
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most of our work in closed-source environments. Until the late 1990s open
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source was a sporadic exception that usually had to live on top of a
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closed-source operating system and alongside closed-source tools; entire
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open-source environments like <a href="../L/Linux.html"><i class="glossterm">Linux</i></a> and the *BSD
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systems didn't even exist in a usable form until around 1993 and weren't
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taken very seriously by anyone but a pioneering few until about five years
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later. </p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="open.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../O.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="open-switch.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">open </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> open switch</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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