History of the Term 'Open Source'

"How I coined the term 'open-source'" - by Christine Peterson

In February 1998, Christine Peterson, associated with the Foresight Institute, was attending a meeting with OSI co-founder Eric S. Raymond and Jon “maddog” Hall. During this meeting, the participants discussed terminology for software that allows public access to its source code. Several options were considered, including "freely distributable" and "sourceware." Peterson later recounted that she came up with "open source software" as a viable term and introduced it to the group.

Pre-1998 Usage of "Open Source"

Caldera’s Open Source Model (1996)

• 1990: post on comp.sys.amiga referenced "BSD’s open source policy."
  • BSD's open source policy meant that user developed software could be ported among platforms, which meant their customers saw a much more cost effective, leading edge capability combined hardware and software platform
• 1990:

• BSD’s open source policy meant that user developed software

• 1990:

• My primary concern is that those policies must comply with the U.S. Constitution and thereby allow the free dissemination of open-source/published material – including software (ESPECIALLY FREE SOFTWARE) which is developed directly from published algorithms.

• 1991:

• For U**X, apparently some vendors distinguish in price or availability between human-readable-source, and encoded-but-compilable- source which isn’t very readable but is only intended to make the program portable to systems other than the vendor’s standard version. If you specified U**X source in #2, indicate interest and price for either or both versions. Note that because of version control, we may be slower to releasing an open-source version.

• 1991:
  
  

• One can still choose to do the port from the open source in the traditional way.
  [..]
  Now it is perfectly reasonable for customers (and prospective customers) to lobby HP to release source code with its product.
  [..]
  Open source for a user-oriented package like ‘WordPerfect’ might create more problems than it would solve.

• 1993:
  
  

• The GPL and the open source code have made Linux the success that it is.

• 1993:
  
  

• Anyone else into “Source Code for NT”? The tools and stuff I’m writing for NT will be released with source. If there are “proprietary” tricks that MS wants to hide, the only way to subvert their hoarding is to post source that illuminates (and I don’t mean disclosing stuff obtained by a non-disclosure agreement). Open Source is best for everyone in the long run.

• 1993: post on comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32, in a discussion about releasing software code
  • Anyone else into "Source Code for NT"? The tools and stuff I'm writing for NT will be released with source. If there are "proprietary" tricks that MS wants to hide, the only way to subvert their hoarding is to post source that illuminates (and I don't mean disclosing stuff obtained by a non-disclosure agreement). Open Source is best for everyone in the long run.”
  • Note that this usage is completely incompatible with the OSI's "open-source means free-software" later re-definition
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• 1993 – this one is interesting, as it very explicitly uses “open source” in a way that’s not compatible with the OSD:
  
  

• The closest comparable product sold by Softek today costs $4000 including open source.

• 1994:
  
  

• This agreement would prevent open distribution of source code, so the XFree86 team has chosen to not support Diamond products rather than give up open source code distribution.

• 1994:
  
  

• I think that you are much better off with open source code than with .TPU files or obfuscated source. When you find bugs or need to make changes because conditions have changed, you can do the fixes. You won’t be relying on someone who may have gone out of business or lost interest in the code.

• 1994:
  
  

• The main problem is that the mac doesn’t really have any large scale open source projects.

• 1995:
  
  

• I need open-source code or open-software for KL(Karhunen and Loeve) transform of images. Does anyone know of site information to get this?

• 1995:
  
  

• Can anyone direct me to a modeler that has an open source code. Anything will do.

• 1996:
  
  

• Caldera announces open source code model for dos
  [..]
  Caldera believes an open source code model benefits the industry in many ways.

• 1997:
  
  

• Canopy provides open source code for former Willows crossBplatform technology: Windows API/ABI

The Earliest Known Usage: 1985

The earliest known reference to "open source" in the context of software comes from a 1985 episode of Computer Chronicles, where Bill Joy described UNIX’s "open source code" as a key reason for its popularity among scientists and engineers. The term open-source was in use even before the commercial internet era.

The term "open-source" in software predates the OSI