Software and development in Italian

Fifth on this list is a codice aperto, and the piece doing the work is the single letter in front, a. Italian uses it to hang a defining feature on a thing, exactly where English welds two words together or puts a hyphen between them. « Open-source » comes out as a codice aperto and « two-factor » as a due fattori; outside this list the same mould gives una casa a due piani, un motore a scoppio, una barca a vela, una gonna a righe, un mulino a vento. Three things are worth fixing at once. The noun after a takes no article of its own. It does not agree with the thing being described, so due programmi a codice aperto keeps codice in the singular although there are two programs. And the whole phrase follows its noun instead of preceding it, so the English order has to be turned round: « an open-source licence » is una licenza a codice aperto. The mould is still productive, which is why every new thing that arrives gets described with it.