In 1998, I was among the five-person group that coined the term “open source” (the others being Todd Anderson, Chris Peterson, Larry Augustin, and Eric Raymond). The five of us were brought together after Netscape decided to make their browser free software. Our goals were twofold: see what we could do to make sure that Netscape was successful with their free software project, and do what we could to take advantage of the publicity surrounding the Netscape event to make Linux successful.
In 1998, I was among the five-person group that coined the term “open source” (the others being Todd Anderson, Chris Peterson, Larry Augustin, and Eric Raymond). The five of us were brought together after Netscape decided to make their browser free software. Our goals were twofold: see what we could do to make sure that Netscape was successful with their free software project, and do what we could to take advantage of the publicity surrounding the Netscape event to make Linux successful.
With the second goal in mind, we decided to come up with a new name to replace free software: Open Source. When at the end of the meeting we decided to promote the use of the term Open Source, we really had no idea that it was going to catch on as quickly as it did.
What we did know was that free software had all the necessary ingredients to be a huge success. Most of us were spending every waking hour either playing with free software, promoting it, programming it, or evangelizing for it. We had all used Unix before and could tell that Linux had largely caught up. Furthermore, we knew that at the rate Linux was being improved, it could easily become an unstoppable force. It was clear that much of the free software that was then available was better than almost any other software out there, at any price.
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