How I coined the term 'open source' (Opensource.com)
Over at Opensource.com, Christine Peterson has published her account of coining the term "open source". Originally written in 2006, her story on the origin of the term has now been published for the first time. The 20 year anniversary of the adoption of "open source" is being celebrated this year by the Open Source Initiative at various conferences (recently at linux.conf.au, at FOSDEM on February 3, and others). "Between meetings that week, I was still focused on the need for a better name and came up with the term "open source software." While not ideal, it struck me as good enough. I ran it by at least four others: Eric Drexler, Mark Miller, and Todd Anderson liked it, while a friend in marketing and public relations felt the term "open" had been overused and abused and believed we could do better. He was right in theory; however, I didn't have a better idea, so I thought I would try to go ahead and introduce it. In hindsight, I should have simply proposed it to Eric Raymond, but I didn't know him well at the time, so I took an indirect strategy instead.Todd had agreed strongly about the need for a new term and offered to assist in getting the term introduced. This was helpful because, as a non-programmer, my influence within the free software community was weak. My work in nanotechnology education at Foresight was a plus, but not enough for me to be taken very seriously on free software questions. As a Linux programmer, Todd would be listened to more closely."