Words change meaning.
Technical words change meaning.
Sometimes, you need to check out a specific commit of a word’s meaning from the version control, to add context to a statement.
“I’m talking about Open Source in its early meaning of Free Software without the confusion over Free, not its later meaning as an ethically empty publication of source code.”
“I mean Object-Oriented Programming as the loosely-defined bucket in which I can put all the ills of software that I’m claiming are solved by Haskell, not the earlier sense of modelling business processes in software with loosely-coupled active programs communicating by sending messages.”
“The word Agile here refers to the later sense of Agile where I run a waterfall with frequent checkpoints and get a certification from a project management institute.”
The problem is that doing so acts as a thought-terminating cliche to people who are not open to hearing a potentially valuable statement about Open Source, Object-Oriented Programming, or Agile development.
If your commit is too early in history, then you can easily be dismissed as etymologically fallacious, or as somebody who won’t accept progress and the glorious devaluation of the word you’re trying to use.
If your commit is too recent in history, then you can easily be dismissed as a Humpty-Dumptyist who’s trying to hide behind a highfalutin term that you have no right to use.
What I’ve come to realise is that my technique for dealing with people who use these rhetorical devices can be as simple as this: ignore them. If they do not want to hear, then I do not need to speak.
