[PaulDavisThe1st]

The second link is titled:

> How Object-Oriented Programming Started > > by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard, > Dept. of Informatics, University of Oslo

The first link is "based on an invited talk" given by the author at the Dept. of Informatics, University of Oslo, with colleagues of (then-deceased) Dahl and Nygaard in attendance. That doesn't guarantee anything in particular, but it makes it likely that they are not making stuff out of thin air.

If OOP was defined by message passing, why was it necessary for Kay to note in 1998 that people had apparently lost sight of this (his) definition?

If you want to say that C++ programming is not OOP, be my guest, but your statements about the history of OOP are not part of some canon or bible.

[zepto]

Ok - I accept that the first piece was by Dahl and Nygaard.

Nevertheless it is just a retrospective application of a term that they didn’t invent, and doesn’t change the history or substantiate the false claim that they invented the term.

OOP was defined by message passing and as you say people lost sight of the idea, largely due to C++

Kay did invent the term. It was about message passing.

Later people used it to describe something else which has little resemblance to the original idea.

It’s fair to say that it’s not part of some canon and of course people are free to miss the point of something and cause a second definition of a word to enter circulation.

Irrespective of canon or multiple definitions, your statements about the history itself in your earlier comments are just false.