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by icebraining 2055 days ago
Sorry, can you define each word you've used in your post?
1 comments

I don't understand what you're asking, can you elaborate?

Edit: I guess you're asking about 'ESR' and 'RMS.' ESR = Eric Raymond, an early proponent of open source as a communal development model ( http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html ). RMS is Richard Stallman, the originator of the GNU project on which the Linux kernel is based, as well as the GPL. RMS disagrees with ESR, in that he argues that the term "open source" is a distraction from the larger goal of free software ( https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....) .

There have been plenty of other authors with strong opinions on the subject but these are the two whose names most often come up in the context. Point being, it is unreasonable to say that "open source" is a term of art (as the GP did) whose meaning will be agreed upon by practitioners and advocates everywhere.

No, the question was supposed to illustrate that if you have that approach to language, then communication is impossible. There needs to be a shared notion of what certain words and concepts mean. You claimed that they mean whatever some person claims them to mean. So the question to you was what do your words mean, since with that entirely freewheeling approach to language, nobody here can know what you meant.
So, in a nutshell: https://xkcd.com/1860/
My claim was a response to an assertion which has now been edited, so... meh. You win teh Internets.
> My claim was a response to an assertion which has now been edited, so...

This is certainly something I sometimes do, but not here. What are you talking about?

Weirdly, at one point, your reply no longer seemed to contain the phrase "term of art." It's back now; I must have been mistaken about the initial change, since you'd have had to edit it well after the expiration period.

In any case, "open source" isn't a term of art. It did not originate with ESR or with anyone else in the software development field, so it means whatever anyone wants it to mean.