Re: open-source vs. open source

["Janet Swisher" <jmswisher -at- gmail -dot- com>]

On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 3:05 PM, Jill Mohan <jillemo -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> It's Friday and my mind is incapable of reasoning this out alone.
> If the rule for compound modifiers is this:  namely that if the compound
> modifier comes before the noun it modifies, then it better be wearing its
> hyphen. If it comes after the noun, then it doesn't need its hyphen?
>
> Orca is an open-source software package.
>
> This software is open source.

That is correct, according to the usage books. Oddly, in this
particular case, I see "open source software" much more often than
"open-source software". This runs counter to the general tendency of
programmers to close up all compounds as much as possible (for example
"plugin" vs. "plug-in").

--Janet
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