When is it "open source" and not "open-source"? (Hyphenation puzzlement)

["Edgar D' Souza" <edgar -dot- b -dot- dsouza -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Hello, TechWhirlers,

I wound up in a little cul-de-sac of hyphenation hell, wondering in
which of these cases the words "open source" would be hyphenated - and
when not:

"organisations are shifting to open-source operating systems"

"learn other open-source scripting languages, like Perl"

"RHCE is the best option for those shifting from proprietary to
open-source technology"

"customers are going to run both open-source and proprietary software
in their enterprise data centre"

"companies working in the open source domain"

"A few years back, a small proportion of fellow hackers and the open
source community would nod in agreement"

"there is an increasing demand for open source professionals"

I feel I have gotten bogged down in the semantics of the expression,
and am sidelining grammar. I consider the general definition of "open
source" (copyrighted works - code, data, artwork, content - that are
licensed under an accepted open source license) and how the two words
relate to the following noun. "Open-source operating systems" seems
obvious: a particular subset of operating systems that are, indeed,
"operating systems licensed under an accepted open source license." I
follow the same thought process for "software"/"technology"/"scripting
languages."

It's when I get to other nouns, like the last 3 cases, that my
semantic check breaks down and I'm left wondering whether to hyphenate
or not. Clearly, (IT) professionals are not themselves licensed under
an accepted open-source license... :-( and yet, this seems to be a
compound adjective followed by a noun...

Do I need to hyphenate these cases as well? Are there other nuances
that I need to learn about? I've been driving myself nuts over this
for over a day, and references on the Net didn't help resolve my
dilemma - so I felt it was time to ask you: please help!

Thanks,
Ed.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Gain access to everything you need to create and publish documentation, 
manuals, and other information through multiple channels. Choose 
authoring (and import) as well as virtually any output you may need. 
http://www.doctohelp.com/


 - Use this space to communicate with TECHWR-L readers - 
   - Contact admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com for more information - 


---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to 
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40web.techwr-l.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/ for more resources and info. 

Please move off-topic discussions to the Chat list, at:
http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/listinfo/techwr-l-chat