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Ask HN: Do you use 'open source' or 'open-source'?

3 pointsby TheMissingPieceabout 10 years ago
It seems to be split 50/50 across the board. What do you use? Open source or open-source?

4 comments

Nadyaabout 10 years ago
I use &quot;open source&quot; personally, but it depends if there is ambiguity.<p>&quot;Open-source&quot; is a compound modifier which are used to avoid ambiguity.<p>Example: &quot;Man-eating shark&quot; could be read &quot;man eating shark&quot; without the hyphen, which can change the meaning to a man eating a shark instead of a shark eating a man.<p>Wikipedia switches constantly: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Open_source" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Open_source</a><p>&quot;open-source&quot; occurs 138 times &quot;open source&quot; occurs 119 times<p>I can&#x27;t think of a scenario where &quot;open source&quot; leads to ambiguity. I would argue &quot;open-source&quot; removes any chance of ambiguity and is the better choice, but for aesthetic purposes I prefer &quot;open source&quot;.
MalcolmDiggsabout 10 years ago
I usually use &quot;open source&quot; but I try to refer to the actual license to avoid ambiguity whenever possible. e.g: rather than say &quot;This repo is open source&quot; I&#x27;d rather say &quot;This repo is MIT licensed&quot;.
steanneabout 10 years ago
open source is a compound noun. open-source is a compound adjective.
MichaelCrawfordabout 10 years ago
I use Open Source and Free Software (capitalized) as well as free as in beer (lowercase).<p>No one else seems to be picking up on my typographical hacktivism though.