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On Feb. 3, 1998, a grouping of people met to discuss the demand for a term that would assist explain the concept of gratis software to businesses and individuals who didn't understand what "free software" was. The term "open source" was created by Christine Peterson, who saw information technology as a way to distinguish the pragmatic idea of a code base that anyone could contribute to or modify from the larger, more philosophical goals of Richard Stallman and his Costless Software Foundation.

Late last week, Christine Peterson, so the executive director of the Foresight Plant, published her business relationship of the day she coined the term. She writes:

The introduction of the term "open source software" was a deliberate effort to make this field of endeavor more understandable to newcomers and to business, which was viewed as necessary to its spread to a broader customs of users. The problem with the main earlier label, "costless software," was not its political connotations, but that—to newcomers—its seeming focus on price is distracting. A term was needed that focuses on the key outcome of source code and that does not immediately confuse those new to the concept. The first term that came along at the correct time and fulfilled these requirements was rapidly adopted: open source.

Peterson details how Eric Raymond was working with Netscape on releasing its browser source code nether a complimentary software license. The term "open source" wasn't introduced with fanfare or a declaration of principles. Instead, programmer Todd Anderson, whom Christine Peterson had spoken to nigh the term, decided to employ information technology in the meeting and come across what happened. He used it. A few minutes subsequently, someone else did too. After some discussion after in the meeting, the term got an informal nod.

Nosotros wanted to use Google Trends to compare usage of both terms but found a puzzling turn down in both. The gap is much larger at commencement if yous examine simply the US, only ultimately usage of both declines. Blue is "open up source" and ruby is "gratuitous software."

It may have started small-scale, simply information technology caught like wildfire. On April 7, 1998, Tim O'Reilly announced a "Freeware Summit." By April 14, this had been changed to refer to an "Open Source Superlative."

The term was initially controversial. Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, has written an essay on why he dislikes the term. Proponents of open up source software wanted a way to refer to the idea that source code is available for exam or modification, without the philosophical or moral dimensions that characterize the FSF's view of free software. If yous're trying to sell a business on adopting an OSS project versus a closed-source application, that focus may be a confusing liability. To Stallman, that supposed liability is the entire point of free software in the first identify.

But regardless of where one falls on the free-and-open-source-software question, or on GNU/Linux, or on any other squabble in the open source community (some of these seem positively quaint), there's no arguing the tremendous achievements of open up source software as a concept. Only as gratuitous software literally existed before the FSF, open source software in which source code was shared with those who wanted to encounter it practically existed before the term "open source" came into mutual parlance.

From Linux to Firefox, to a thousand other examples, open source software has unquestionably changed the earth. Open source software powers tens of millions of devices across the globe. It may not take done so while holding to the ideals of those that created the movement, but information technology's a remarkable story of success.

ZDNet has its own fantabulous retrospective for those wanting more on this topic.