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  • gloriousspearfish
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    1 year ago

    You are cherry-picking quite a bit in that Wikipedia article. There is also a whole section discussing the confusion between the terms open source, free and libre.

    I would venture that the most commonly understood definition of the term is that open source software simply means what it says, that the source code is openly available. And nothing more.

    Free or libre software expresses the intention you describe explicitly, that the recipient is allowed to share and modify the software. Thus removing ambiguity.

    Open Source is indeed a term existing for many years, probably a lot longer than you are thinking about. Trying to redefine that as meaning anything more than what is says is what is causing confusion.