That is absolute nonsense. The people behind OSI worked long and hard to find a term that could be instead instead of Free Software, which they considered to have unfortunate connotations. This is something some disagree with, but that was their cause regardless. Their due diligence of the term took great trouble to make sure it had not any undocumented previous use.
Of course the words had occasionally been used together, but not as a term. That would have undermined their legal strategy altogether. They then failed to secure the trademarks they wanted, but not because the term had any documented previous use.
You may disagree with the outcome, you may disagree with the OSI altogether, but it is wrong to misrepresent history.
> Their due diligence of the term took great trouble to make sure it had not any undocumented previous use.
Doesn't mean an organization should be able to just take a self-descriptive phrase, say purple icicle, and assign a very specific meaning to it. Every self-descriptive phrase has an existing usage. Because one day you'll see an icicle that is purple and say "hey, purple icicle" only to have a horde of people rush and say "thats not a purple icicle!" (literally what happened in this thread).
> They then failed to secure the trademarks they wanted, but not because the term had any documented previous use.
No, of course they didn't have any documented previous use. "Documented previous use" being reserved uses before. You know why? Because it is a self-descriptive phrase that is too broad, ie descriptive mark which aren't granted. They chose a very basic self-descriptive phrase (frequency of previous use doesn't matter) and literally could not get it trademarked because it is self-descriptive and broad, but YET CONTINUED ON even after being swatted down by trademark offices around the world. Absolutely bonkers.
That is absolute nonsense. The people behind OSI worked long and hard to find a term that could be instead instead of Free Software, which they considered to have unfortunate connotations. This is something some disagree with, but that was their cause regardless. Their due diligence of the term took great trouble to make sure it had not any undocumented previous use.
Of course the words had occasionally been used together, but not as a term. That would have undermined their legal strategy altogether. They then failed to secure the trademarks they wanted, but not because the term had any documented previous use.
You may disagree with the outcome, you may disagree with the OSI altogether, but it is wrong to misrepresent history.