FLOSS Is Not Just Good for Your Teeth (2006)

Free, Libre and Open Source Explained (finally) in Simple English!

“Why do they call it ‘FLOSS’ when it doesn’t clean your teeth?”

Are you a non-nerd, a human being who happens to use computers without living inside them? Does that make you curious to find out what the buzz regarding open source and free software is all about? What’s in it for you? Does it work? Is it fun and easy to use? How is it made and who makes it? And how ‘free’ or ‘open’ is it, really? Have you looked long and hard for answers to questions like these in plain English? If that’s the case, ‘FLOSS is not just good for teeth’ could be just what you are looking for.

Impress your techie buddies with the fact that you care for your kernel, and open yourself to a whole new world of concepts that offer challenging and exciting ideas about creativity, collaboration and coding. ‘Floss’ geeks, make yourselves understood to other human beings – download and distribute ‘FLOSS is not just good for teeth’ to friends, family and colleagues, so they can finally know and appreciate what keeps you awake while they sleep.

‘FLOSS is not just good for teeth’ is a collaboratively produced introduction to the concepts that underlie free and open source software, written specially for the non-technical reader, at the Sarai Programme (www.sarai.net) of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.

Editorial/Design Coordinator: Monica Narula
Text: Ben Olin, Aniruddha ‘Karim’ Shankar, G Karunakar
Illustration: Parismita Singh
Design: Mrityunjay Chatterjee
ISBN: 81-901429-8-4
Delhi, 2006
32 pages

authors

Direct download

Bansal, Keller, Lovink (eds.) – In the Shade of the Commons. Towards a Culture of Open Networks (2006)

Published as a part of the project ‘Towards a Culture of Open Networks’ of which the partners are Sarai in Delhi (India), t/0 Netbase in Vienna (Austria) and Waag Society in Amsterdam.

The book is divided into three main sections. The first is a general part with declarations made by the project partners.

In the second, one can find an overview of the event World Information City Bangalore, that took place November 2005. This part also contains a photographic review in colour.

The last part of the book, edited by Geert Lovink is a theoretical approach of the subject of ‘open networks’, by many authors coming from Asia, Europe and North America.

Editors: Lipika Bansal, Paul Keller, Geert Lovink
Layout: Ron Boonstra
ISBN: 90-806452-3-0, 978-90-806452-3-3
Publisher Waag Society Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2006
The book is available as pdf download and can be distributed according the CC-License ‘Attribution-ShareAlike’.

authors

Direct download

Jaron Lanier: You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (2010)

Jaron Lanier, a Silicon Valley visionary since the 1980s, was among the first to predict the revolutionary changes the World Wide Web would bring to commerce and culture. Now, in his first book, written more than two decades after the web was created, Lanier offers this provocative and cautionary look at the way it is transforming our lives for better and for worse.

The current design and function of the web have become so familiar that it is easy to forget that they grew out of programming decisions made decades ago. The web’s first designers made crucial choices (such as making one’s presence anonymous) that have had enormous—and often unintended—consequences. What’s more, these designs quickly became “locked in,” a permanent part of the web’s very structure.

Lanier discusses the technical and cultural problems that can grow out of poorly considered digital design and warns that our financial markets and sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter are elevating the “wisdom” of mobs and computer algorithms over the intelligence and judgment of individuals.

Lanier also shows:
How 1960s antigovernment paranoia influenced the design of the online world and enabled trolling and trivialization in online discourse.
How file sharing is killing the artistic middle class.
How a belief in a technological “rapture” motivates some of the most influential technologists.
Why a new humanistic technology is necessary.

Controversial and fascinating, You Are Not a Gadget is a deeply felt defense of the individual from an author uniquely qualified to comment on the way technology interacts with our culture.

Publisher Knopf, 2010
ISBN 0307269647, 9780307269645
Length 224 pages

review (Adam Thierer, Technology Liberation Front)
review (Clive Thompson, Bookforum)

author (incl. web resources related to the book)
publisher
google books

Direct download
Download via Sharebee

Song hojun: D.I.Y. Satellite (2009) [English/Korean]

The artist book of Song hojun, who’s leading Open Source Satellite Initiative and making D.I.Y. satellite. Based on artist’s sketch and manual of D.I.Y. Satellite, this zine contains thoughts on private space program, its execution plan, and things are going to happen afterward.

Profit of selling book is used to build a satellite and rent a rocket.

Artist’s Zine by Song hojun (Korea)
Published by mediabus.org, October 2009
ISBN: 978-89-94027-04-3
40 pages
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Korea.

author

Direct download [English]
Direct download [Korean]

Ira Greenberg: Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art (2007)

This book is written especially for artists, designers, and other creative professionals and students exploring code art, graphics programming, and computational aesthetics. The book provides a solid and comprehensive foundation in programming, including object-oriented principles, and introduces you to the easy-to-grasp Processing language, so no previous coding experience is necessary. The book then goes through using Processing to code lines, curves, shapes, and motion, continuing to the point where you’ll have mastered Processing and can really start to unleash your creativity with realistic physics, interactivity, and 3D! In the final chapter, you’ll even learn how to extend your Processing skills by working directly with the powerful Java programming language, the language Processing itself is built with.

Foreword by Keith Peters
Publisher Springer, 2007
ISBN 159059617X, 9781590596173
Length 810 pages

publisher
google books

Download

Casey Reas, Ben Fry: Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists (2007)

It has been more than twenty years since desktop publishing reinvented design, and it’s clear that there is a growing need for designers and artists to learn programming skills to fill the widening gap between their ideas and the capability of their purchased software. This book is an introduction to the concepts of computer programming within the context of the visual arts. It offers a comprehensive reference and text for Processing (www.processing.org), an open-source programming language that can be used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and anyone who wants to program images, animation, and interactivity.

The ideas in Processing have been tested in classrooms, workshops, and arts institutions, including UCLA, Carnegie Mellon, New York University, and Harvard University. Tutorial units make up the bulk of the book and introduce the syntax and concepts of software (including variables, functions, and object-oriented programming), cover such topics as photography and drawing in relation to software, and feature many short, prototypical example programs with related images and explanations. More advanced professional projects from such domains as animation, performance, and typography are discussed in interviews with their creators. “Extensions” present concise introductions to further areas of investigation, including computer vision, sound, and electronics. Appendixes, references to other material, and a glossary contain additional technical details. Processing can be used by reading each unit in order, or by following each category from the beginning of the book to the end. The Processing software and all of the code presented can be downloaded and run for future exploration.

Essays by: Alexander R. Galloway, Golan Levin, R. Luke DuBois, Simon Greenwold, Francis Li, Hernando Barragán

Interviews with: Jared Tarbell, Martin Wattenberg, James Paterson, Erik van Blockland, Ed Burton, Josh On, Jürg Lehni, Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, Mathew Cullen and Grady Hall, Bob Sabiston, Jennifer Steinkamp, Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt, Sue Costabile, Chris Csikszentmihályi, Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman, Mark Hansen

Foreword by John Maeda
Publisher MIT Press, 2007
ISBN 0262182629, 9780262182621
Length 710 pages

project website
publisher
google books

Download
All code examples in the book (ZIP)

Luc Soete, Bas ter Weel (eds.): The Economics of the Digital Society

This important book presents a unique body of research into the economics of the digital society. It questions how modern economies have been transformed as a result of digital goods and markets, and explores the policy implications and challenges of this revolution.

Luc Soete and Bas ter Weel have assembled leading economists and social scientists to provide an invaluable insight into the influence of the digital society in the core fields of economics. They offer a comprehensive overview of the changes that information and communication technologies (ICTs) have brought about in our analysis and understanding of society, focusing particularly upon welfare economics, networks, the diffusion of new businesses and new forms of entrepreneurship, the auctioning of licences, the much-debated role of intellectual property rights and the emergence of free software in the open-source movement.

Published by Edward Elgar, 2005
ISBN: 1843767740
384 pages

More info (publisher)

Download

David Bollier: Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own (2009)

“A world organized around centralized control, strict intellectual property rights, and hierarchies of credentialed experts is under siege. A radically different order of society based on open access, decentralized creativity, collaborative intelligence, and cheap and easy sharing is ascendant.”

From free and open-source software, Creative Commons licenses, Wikipedia, remix music and video mashups, peer production, open science, open education, and open business, the world of digital media has spawned a new “sharing economy” that increasingly competes with entrenched media giants.

Reporting from the heart of this “free culture” movement, journalist and activist David Bollier provides the first comprehensive history of the attempt by a global brigade of techies, lawyers, artists, musicians, scientists, businesspeople, innovators, and geeks of all stripes to create a digital republic committed to freedom and innovation. Viral Spiral-the term Bollier coins to describe the almost-magical process by which Internet users can come together to build online commons and tools-brilliantly interweaves the disparate strands of this eclectic movement. The story describes major technological developments and pivotal legal struggles, as well as fascinating profiles of hacker Richard Stallman, copyright scholar Lawrence Lessig, and other colorful figures.

A milestone in reporting on the Internet by one of our leading media critics, Viral Spiral is for anyone seeking to take the full measure of the new digital era.

Publisher New Press, 2009
ISBN 1595583963, 9781595583963
Length 344 pages

More info (publisher)
More info (google books)

Download

David M. Berry: Copy, Rip, Burn: The Politics of Copyleft and Open Source (2008)

Open source technology, like Linux, has revolutionized the world of copyright and expanded the technological potentials of digital media. From downloading music and movies to accessing free software, digital media is forcing us to rethink the very idea of intellectual property. While big companies complain about lost profits, the individual has never enjoyed such freedom and autonomy in the market.

Berry explores this debate in a clear and concise way, offering an ideal introduction for anyone not versed in the legalistic terminology that up until now has dominated coverage of this issue. Looking at the historical development of the free software and the open source movement he examines its growth, politics, and potential impact, showing how the ideas that inspired the movement have now begun to influence wider cultural and political transformations. He explores whether free software and open source offer the potential for rethinking our relationship with technology in the information society.

This is a key text for students of media studies, politics, journalism, and anyone interested in new opportunities for creating a truly independent and democratic media.

Publisher Pluto Press, 2008
ISBN 0745324150, 9780745324159
Length 272 pages

More info (publisher)
More info (google books)

Download

Christopher M. Kelty: Two Bits: The cultural significance of free software (2008)

In Two Bits, Christopher M. Kelty investigates the history and cultural significance of Free Software, revealing the people and practices that have transformed not only software, but also music, film, science, and education. Free Software is a set of practices devoted to the collaborative creation of software source code that is made openly and freely available through an unconventional use of copyright law. Kelty shows how these specific practices have reoriented the relations of power around the creation, dissemination, and authorization of all kinds of knowledge after the arrival of the Internet.Two Bitsalso makes an important contribution to discussions of public spheres and social imaginaries by demonstrating how Free Software is a “recursive public”-a public organized around the ability to build, modify, and maintain the very infrastructure that gives it life in the first place.Drawing on ethnographic research that took him from an Internet healthcare start-up company in Boston to media labs in Berlin to young entrepreneurs in Bangalore, Kelty describes the technologies and the moral vision that binds together hackers, geeks, lawyers, and other Free Software advocates. In each case, he shows how their practices and way of life include not only the sharing of software source code but also ways of conceptualizing openness, writing copyright licenses, coordinating collaboration, and proselytizing for the movement. By exploring in detail how these practices came together as the Free Software movement from the 1970s to the 1990s, Kelty also shows how it is possible to understand the new movements that are emerging out of Free Software: projects such as Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that creates copyright licenses, and Connexions, a project to create an online scholarly textbook commons.

Published by Duke University Press, 2008
ISBN 0822342642, 9780822342649
378 pages

More info (author)
More info (google books)

Download

Sam Williams: Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman’s Crusade for Free Software (2002)

“Free as in Freedom interweaves biographical snapshots of GNU project founder Richard Stallman with the political, social and economic history of the free software movement. It examines Stallman’s unique personality and how that personality has been at turns a driving force and a drawback in terms of the movement’s overall success. “Free as in Freedom examines one man’s 20-year attempt to codify and communicate the ethics of 1970s era “hacking” culture in such a way that later generations might easily share and build upon the knowledge of their computing forebears. The book documents Stallman’s personal evolution from teenage misfit to prescient adult hacker to political leader and examines how that evolution has shaped the free software movement. Like Alan Greenspan in the financial sector, Richard Stallman has assumed the role of tribal elder within the hacking community, a community that bills itself as anarchic and averse to central leadership or authority. How did this paradox come about? “Free as in Freedom provides an answer. It also looks at how the latest twists and turns in the software marketplace have diminished Stallman’s leadership role in some areas while augmenting it in others. Finally, “Free as in Freedom examines both Stallman and the free software movement from historical viewpoint. Will future generations see Stallman as a genius or crackpot? The answer to that question depends partly on which side of the free software debate the reader currently stands and partly upon the reader’s own outlook for the future. 100 years from now, when terms such as “computer,” “operating system” and perhaps even “software” itself seem hopelessly quaint, will RichardStallman’s particular vision of freedom still resonate, or will it have taken its place alongside other utopian concepts on the ‘ash-heap of history?’

Published by O’Reilly, 2002
ISBN 0596002874, 9780596002879
225 pages

Key terms: GNU Project, Richard Stallman, Unix, Lisp Machine, Linus Torvalds, GNU Emacs, free software movement, AI Lab, operating system, hacker ethic, Free Software Foundation, Sun Microsystems, proprietary software, Steven Levy, GNU Manifesto, source code, Open Publication License, Eric Raymond, Minix, Napster

More info

Download
HTML version

Eric S. Raymond: The Cathedral & the Bazaar (2000)

Open source provides the competitive advantage in the Internet Age. According to the August Forrester Report, 56 percent of IT managers interviewed at Global 2,500 companies are already using some type of open source software in their infrastructure and another 6 percent will install it in the next two years. This revolutionary model for collaborative software development is being embraced and studied by many of the biggest players in the high-tech industry, from Sun Microsystems to IBM to Intel.

The Cathedral & the Bazaar is a must for anyone who cares about the future of the computer industry or the dynamics of the information economy. Already, billions of dollars have been made and lost based on the ideas in this book. Its conclusions will be studied, debated, and implemented for years to come. According to Bob Young, “This is Eric Raymond’s great contribution to the success of the open source revolution, to the adoption of Linux-based operating systems, and to the success of open source users and the companies that supply them.”

The interest in open source software development has grown enormously in the past year. This revised and expanded paperback edition includes new material on open source developments in 1999 and 2000. Raymond’s clear and effective writing style accurately describing the benefits of open source software has been key to its success. With major vendors creating acceptance for open source within companies, independent vendors will become the open source story in 2001.

Key terms: hacker culture, fetchmail, open-source software, gift culture, Netscape, ARPAnet, Halloween Documents, Linus’s Law, hackerdom, Linus Torvalds, operating system, Homesteading the Noosphere, Microsoft, Zope, closed-source, SMTP, Linux kernel, network effects, VA Linux Systems, Larry Wall

Version 3.0

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the Open Publication License, version 2.0.

More info

Download
HTML version

Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman (2002)

The intersection of ethics, law, business and computer software is the subject of these essays and speeches by MacArthur Foundation Grant winner, Richard M. Stallman. This collection includes historical writings such as The GNU Manifesto, which defined and launched the activist Free Software Movement, along with new writings on hot topics in copyright, patent law, and the controversial issue of “trusted computing.” Stallman takes a critical look at common abuses of copyright law and patents when applied to computer software programs, and how these abuses damage our entire society and remove our existing freedoms. He also discusses the social aspects of software and how free software can create community and social justice.

Given the current turmoil in copyright and patent laws, including the DMCA and proposed CBDTPA, these essays are more relevant than ever. Stallman tackles head-on the essential issues driving the current changes in copyright law. He argues that for creativity to flourish, software must be free of inappropriate and overly-broad legal constraints. Over the past twenty years his arguments and actions have changed the course of software history; this new book is sure to impact the future of software and legal policies in the years to come.

By Richard M. Stallman, Lawrence Lessig, Joshua Gay, Free Software Foundation (Cambridge, Mass.)
Contributor Lawrence Lessig, Joshua Gay
Published by Free Software Foundation, 2002
ISBN 1882114981, 9781882114986
224 pages

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this book provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

More info (includes PDF downloads of Italian, Catalan, and Spanish translations of the book)

Direct download, Download

Decoding Liberation: A Philosophical Investigation of Free Software

This book provides a synoptic perspective on the relationships between free software and freedom. The book focuses on five main themes: emancipatory potential of technology social liberties the facilitation of creativity the objectivity of computing as a scientific practice the role of software in a cyborg world and asks:nbsp;are the freedoms of free software, and how are they manifested? Free software continues to be hyped.nbsp;This booknbsp;demonstrates that the hype is well-founded and yet too narrowly focused: free software promises to transform not only technology but society as well.

Decoding Liberation: A Philosophical Investigation of Free Software
By Samir Chopra, Scott Dexter
Edition: illustrated
Published by Routledge, 2007
ISBN 0415978939, 9780415978934
256 pages
preview

Download

Open Source Democracy: How Online Communication is Changing Offline Politics

The ‘open source’ movement in computer software is self-organising and decentralised; it also values participation over power. Douglas Rushkoff, the leading US commentator on digital culture, argues that democratic politics should work in the same way.

Open Source Democracy: How Online Communication is Changing Offline Politics
By Douglas Rushkoff
Published by Demos, 2003
ISBN 1841801135, 9781841801131
66 pages
full view

Download