Article author here. My concern would be that you could use any term but, as soon as that term gains value, it would start to be abused and blurred and we'd be in the same situation. It would be a shame to effectively throw away the value of "Open Source" that has been built up by the OSI and the community around Open Source software. I don't think the term is past being useful, the vast majority of its use i still see it applied as per the OSI definition, but there's always going to be a little maintenance needed.
“OSI open source” would not have the problem you speculate on. I’m sure there are other alternatives that could also work to solve this problem.
At this point, the counter problem is growing: the legitimate alternative meanings of the term “open source” are getting more used as time goes, not less, and speaking personally I don’t think maintenance or blog posts is going to fix it. Creative Commons licenses got pretty good at this by adding more words to each variant of their license titles. What about that? There’s an inherent problem with hoping to keep a term as short and generic as “open source”, when the issues you care about are separate from whether you’re allowed to look at the source.
the reason that creative commons isn't confusing and hasn't been co-opted isn't because it makes so much more sense. the reason that it's maintained it's meaning and can't be co-opted is because it is trademarked. if you make something that isn't creative commons but say that it is you can get sued. if you make something that isn't open source and say that it is you cant.
That’s a great reason to pick a different term, since “open source” can’t be trademarked. Something with “OSI” in the name probably could…
BTW, I don’t think you can reasonably argue that “attribution non-commercial share-alike” is not more specific and not a better summary of the license conditions than the generic term “open source”. Trademark is a good point, however I think you’re wrong to say that better license titles is not part of why CC licenses are less confusing to a broad range of people.
