But that is how it was formed by the original commercial unix folks (which I was one).    We talked about the open systems community.  Look at some of the uniforum docs in the archives from the mid 1980s if you don't believe me. That is what was meant because we could not say Unix and at the term in the commercial community it was Unix vs proprietary systems aka VMS, MPE, Kronos et al.

The context of the day that was exactly what we meant.  That said, I'll grant you you words change meaning over time, but I was and do use the term in context of the original open systems community - which I was a founder. 

If you mean FOSS then say that, if you mean an open system with published interfaces and available sources, that by definition open source software.

So please don't try tell me what we meant. Eric Raymond is probably the person where I  started to see the warp of its meaning. 

That's why I always say FOSS when I mean free in the context of RMS.    Also remember most of the current FOSS movement the code is very restrictioned in it's license.  The difference is if you have to pay a fee for it and what you can do with the derivative works 

Fyi if you want to discuss free or not that discussion needs to move to COFF.  This is certain a discussion from an old f*RTS perspective.

On Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 11:02 AM Chet Ramey <chet.ramey@case.edu> wrote:
On 2/18/20 10:48 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
> The term OSS to mean free as in beer is just not correct.   The sources
> were always free a as in available to be read but just like today they are
> licensed.

I'm not sure that "open source" as a synonym for "source code available
for purchase" is valid.


--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/
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