Hacker News Reader

Considering the term originated with them, it's fair to say they get to dictate what it means.

Ah, things would be simpler indeed if words could be dictated.

And they can be -that's why we have dictionaries.

Terms DO have meanings whether contrarians and the argumentative want to acknowledge those meanings or not.

Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. The meaning of terms outside of specific fields like law is based on consensus, not authority. Merriam-Webster doesn't own the English language, and neither does OSI.

If you want to look for consensus, there's no better place than Wikipedia.

> Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software

Citations for this sentence (many more in the full article):

- https://books.google.com/books?id=04jG7TTLujoC&pg=PA4#v=onep...

- https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/ital/article/view/5105

Reply on news.ycombinator.com