Until hackers found a way to get past this
cognitive dissonance, the free software movement faced
an uphill climb, even after Netscape.
Peterson, whose organization had taken an active
interest in advancing the free software cause, offered
an alternative: open source.
Looking back, Peterson says she came up with the open
source term while discussing Netscape's decision with a
friend in the public relations industry. She doesn't
remember where she came upon the term or if she
borrowed it from another field, but she does remember
her friend disliking the term.5
At the meeting, Peterson says, the response was
dramatically different. "I was hesitant about
suggesting it," Peterson recalls. "I had no standing
with the group, so started using it casually, not
highlighting it as a new term." To Peterson's surprise,
the term caught on. By the end of the meeting, most of
the attendees, including Raymond, seemed pleased by it.
Raymond says he didn't publicly use the term "open
source" as a substitute for free software until a day
or two after the Mozilla launch party, when O'Reilly
had scheduled a meeting to talk about free software.
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