Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on November 05, 2006 12:17 PM
So what happens when I start some project, and write some really good code, release it under the GPL2 on sourceforge, and nobody cares. Nobody finds it interesting, and therefore there is no community. Is it then not open source?
IF we are going to be prescriptive, perhaps we ought to prefer the meaning embodied in the juxtaposition of the words "open" and "source". That is, source which is open! You can see the source, mess with it, change it, compile it, run the result, redistribute it, whatever. Thus, it is open. Open to viewing, open to do what you want with it. Open. And source.
You are attempting to make linguistics do a duty it was never meant to do. First, linguistics is not prescriptive or proscriptive (I'd regard proscription as a subset of prescription, but okay). As my fiancee's linguistics profs say, "If a word is used in a verby place, then it is a verb in that place." Second, even allowing for prescription from linguistics, at least make a sensible prescription, rather than simply conscripting the most readily available poor justification for your own political soapbox. There is no linguistic reason that the phrase "Open Source" implies anything about community. Linguistics would either say that it has the meanings that it is used for, or that its meaning should be derived from its component parts, as I said above.
I suppose you can perfectly legitimately argue that you think open source should only be applied to projects with a viable community. I'd disagree with you, but you could certainly argue that. You could also argue against the corporatization of phrases to form buzzphrases, and I'd probably be with you on that. However, making linguistics a whore to justify your argument constitutes a fallacy, which is avoided by responsible and honest people.
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This excludes many legit projects
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on November 05, 2006 12:17 PMIF we are going to be prescriptive, perhaps we ought to prefer the meaning embodied in the juxtaposition of the words "open" and "source". That is, source which is open! You can see the source, mess with it, change it, compile it, run the result, redistribute it, whatever. Thus, it is open. Open to viewing, open to do what you want with it. Open. And source.
You are attempting to make linguistics do a duty it was never meant to do. First, linguistics is not prescriptive or proscriptive (I'd regard proscription as a subset of prescription, but okay). As my fiancee's linguistics profs say, "If a word is used in a verby place, then it is a verb in that place." Second, even allowing for prescription from linguistics, at least make a sensible prescription, rather than simply conscripting the most readily available poor justification for your own political soapbox. There is no linguistic reason that the phrase "Open Source" implies anything about community. Linguistics would either say that it has the meanings that it is used for, or that its meaning should be derived from its component parts, as I said above.
I suppose you can perfectly legitimately argue that you think open source should only be applied to projects with a viable community. I'd disagree with you, but you could certainly argue that. You could also argue against the corporatization of phrases to form buzzphrases, and I'd probably be with you on that. However, making linguistics a whore to justify your argument constitutes a fallacy, which is avoided by responsible and honest people.
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