Free software

For free, libre and open-source software, culture and the arts

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  Federated networks, Fediverse

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  Constant, artist-run non-profit for copyleft and feminisms, Brussels

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  Varia, cooperative for everyday technology, Rotterdam

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  Art Meets Radical Openness, festival for art, hacktivism and open cultures, Linz

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  Eclectic Tech Carnival, feminist gatherings around free software and open hardware

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  Piksel, festival for kunst og fri teknologi, Bergen

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  Community servers

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  Shadow libraries

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  runme.org, software art repository

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  Pure Data, visual programming for media

• Sunil Abraham
• Access Space
• Adhocracy (exhibition)
• AMRO
• Amelia Andersdotter
• APO33
• Raphaël Bastide
• Manetta Berends
• Jan-Christoph Borchardt
• Michal Cáb
• Calafou
• André Castro
• Joana Chicau
• Community servers
• Constant
• Ginger Coons
• Disclosures
• Donestech
• Marc Dusseiller
• Eclectic Tech Carnival
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• F/LAT
• Fediverse
• FISL
• Flossie
• FOSDEM
• Luka Frelih
• Gisle Frøysland
• FSCONS
• Furtherfield
• @gnd
• Peter Gonda
• GOTO10
• Artemis Gryllaki
• Alex Gunn
• Hackers At Large
• Hackteria
• Haip
• Christina Haralanova
• Graham Harwood
• Benjamin Mako Hill
• Hivenetworks
• Adam Hyde
• The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest
• Interferencias
• Internet activism
• Jaromil
• Ryan Jordan
• LAFKON
• Micah Lee
• Libre Graphics Meeting
• Yuwei Lin
• LURK
• Make Art
• MaMa
• Vesna Manojlovic
• Aymeric Mansoux
• Manufactura Independente
• Pierre Marchand
• Marcell Mars
• Mattin
• Tomislav Medak
• Media Design and Communication Piet Zwart Institute Rotterdam
• Armin Medosch
• Modern Poland Foundation
• Mur.at
• Michael Murtaugh
• Mz Baltazar's Laboratory
• Oekonux Conference
• Julian Oliver
• OpenLab
• OSP
• Piksel
• Platoniq
• Public Software Group
• Pure Data
• Relearn
• Hugo Roy
• Sanchez
• Servers
• Servus.at
• Sloboda stvaralaštvu!
• Femke Snelting
• Sourcefabric
• Richard Stallman
• Malte Steiner
• SuperCollider
• Systemli
• Systerserver
• TransHACKfeminist! camp
• Transpiksel
• Marco Valdivia
• Marloes de Valk
• Varia
• James Vasile
• Danja Vasiliev
• Verbindingen / Jonctions
• VX:mission
• Wizards of OS
• WSFII
• Wendy Van Wynsberghe
• Simon Yuill

Events

FLOSS arts festivals and events

• Eclectic Tech Carnival, int., *2002
• Piksel, Bergen, *2003
• Verbindingen / Jonctions, Brussels, [2000] 2004-2013
• HAIP, Ljubljana, 2004-2012
• OpenLab, London, 2005-2012
• Make Art, Poitiers, 2006-2010
• Libre Graphics Meeting, int., *2006
• Art Meets Radical Openness (formerly LiWoLi), Linz, *2008
• Flossie, London, 2012-2013
• TransPiksel, int., *2016

Conferences and summits

• OSCON, Portland, *1999
• FISL, Porto Alegre, *2000
• FOSDEM, Brussels, *2001
• Oekonux Conference, int., *2001
• Linux Audio Conference, int., *2002
• LibrePlanet, Cambridge/MA, *2006
• FSCONS, Gothenburg, *2007
• Open Source Bridge, Portland, 2009-2018, [1]
• FOSSASIA Summit, Asia, *2010
• IndieWeb Summit / IndieWebCamp, Portland & int., *2011
• FabFuse, Amersfoort, 2012-2015
• Koppelting, Amersfoort, *2016
• OFFDEM, Brussels, *2020, [2]

• Event listings: foss.events (Europe & online, *2019).

Publications

• Richard M. Stallman, "The GNU Manifesto", Mar 1985 ff. [3]

• Richard M. Stallman, "What Is the Free Software Foundation?", GNU’s Bulletin 1:1, Cambridge, MA: Free Software Foundation, Feb 1986, pp 8-9.

• Richard M. Stallman, "What Is Free Software?", 1996 ff. Previous versions.

• Richard M. Stallman, et al., Free Software: Essays and Articles, 1996 ff. Collection of articles.

• Bruce Perens, "Debian Social Contract, Version 1.0", Jul 1997.

• Eric S. Raymond, "Goodbye, ‘Free Software’; Hello, ‘Open Source’", Feb 1998.

• Richard M. Stallman, "Why 'Free Software' is better than 'Open Source'", 1998; rev. as "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software", 2007 ff.

• Eric S. Raymond, "Open Source Summit", Linux Journal, Jun 1998.

• Eric S. Raymond, "Keeping an Open Mind", Cyberian Express, Mar/Apr 1999.

• Mark Stone, Chris DiBona, Sam Ockman (eds.), Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution, Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 1999, 280 pp.
  • Bruce Perens, "The Open Source Definition", pp 171-188. [4]

• Eric S. Raymond, "The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story", (Part Two), Feb 2004.

• Eric S. Raymond, "Terminology Wars: A Web Content Analysis", 2004.

• Eric S. Raymond, "Open Minds, Open Source", Analog, Jun-Jul 2004.

• Simon Yuill, "Your Machines: Your Culture", Variant 2:20, Summer 2004.

• Armin Medosch, "Roots Culture: Free Software Vibrations Inna Babylon", in How Open is the Future? Economic, Social & Cultural Scenarios Inspired by Free and Open Source Software, eds. Marleen Wynants and Jan Cornelis, Brussels: VUB Brussels University Press, 2005, pp 135-162; upd. in Engineering Culture: On 'The Author as (Digital) Producer' , eds. Geoff Cox and Joasia Krysa, New York: Autonomedia, 2005, pp 177-201; repr. in Sarai Reader 2005: Bare Acts, New Delhi: Sarai, 2005, pp 222-239. Draft.

• Mute 2(1): "Underneath The Knowledge Commons", London: Mute, Dec 2005.

• Simon Yuill, "All Problems of Notation Will Be Solved By the Masses", Mute 2:8, London: Mute, May 2008.

• Aymeric Mansoux, Marloes de Valk (eds.), FLOSS+Art, Poitiers: Goto10, and London: Mute, 2008, 320 pp.

• Chun Lee, Art Unlimited: An Investigation into Contemporary Digital Arts and the Free Software Movement, London: Middlesex University, 2008, 166 pp. PhD dissertation.

• Christopher M. Kelty, Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008, xvi+378 pp, PDF.
  • Two Bits: la trascendencia cultural del software libre, ed. Florencio Cabello, Barcelona: Icaria, 2019, 455 pp, PDF. (Spanish)

• Marloes de Valk, "Tools to Fight Boredom: FLOSS and GNU/Linux for Artists Working in the Field of Generative Music and Software Art", Contemporary Music Review 28(1): "Generative Music", eds. Nick Collins and Andrew R. Brown, 2009, pp 89-101, PDF. [5]

• En Defensa del Software Libre, 4 vols., 2010-2016. (Spanish)

• Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett (eds.), Collaboration and Freedom – The World of Free and Open Source Art, 2011.

• Aymeric Mansoux, "How Deep is Your Source", in Digital Art Conservation, Preservation of Digital Art: Theory and Practice, ed. Bernhard Serexhe, Karlsruhe: ZKM, 2012.

• Paula Roush, "Towards a Free/ Libre/ Open/ Source/ University", Furtherfield, Feb 2013.

• Journal of Peer Production 3: "The Critical Power of Free Software", Jul 2013.
  • Christopher Kelty, "There Is No Free Software".

• Aymeric Mansoux, "My Lawyer is an Artist", Hz #19, ed. Sashiko Hayashi, Fylkingen, 2014.

• I Think That Conversations Are the Best, Biggest Thing That Software Has to Offer its User, Brussels: Constant, 2015, 351 pp. (English)

• Aymeric Mansoux, Sandbox Culture: A Study of the Application of Free and Open Source Software Licensing Ideas to Art and Cultural Production, London: Goldsmiths University of London, 2017, xxxviii+486 pp. PhD dissertation.

• Christina Dunbar-Hester, Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures, Princeton University Press, 2020, xi+271 pp. [6]

• petites singularités, "O2FFDEM. The threat to free software: An OFFDEM manifesto", Jan 2020.
  • "O2FFDEM. La menace qui pèse sur le logiciel libre. Un manifeste d’OFFDEM", Jan 2020. (French)

• Aymeric Mansoux, Roel Roscam Abbing, "Seven Theses on the Fediverse and the Becoming of FLOSS", in The Eternal Network: The Ends and Becomings of Network Culture, eds. Kristoffer Gansing and Inga Luchs, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, and Berlin: transmediale e.V., Feb 2020, pp 124-140, HTML.
  • "Sieben Thesen zum Fediverse und zur Weiterentwicklung von FLOSS", in The Eternal Network. Vom Enden und Werden der Netzkultur, eds. Kristoffer Gansing and Inga Luchs, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, and Berlin: transmediale e.V., 2020, pp 136-154. (German)
  • "Sept Thèses sur le Fédiverse et le devenir du logiciel libre", trans. Framalang, Framablog, 26 Jan 2021. (French)

• Présence Solidaire, "On Software Syndicalism", Jul 2021.

• THX - Présence Solidaire. Pænser Ensemble: le Collectif et le Soin Radical, Brussels: petites singularités, 2021, 168 pp. (French),(English),(Spanish)

• Toolkit for Homes of Commons, European Cultural Foundation, 2021.

• MARCH: "Publishing as Protocol", eds. Constant and Vessel, 2021-2023. [7]

• Johan Söderberg, Maxigas, Resistance to the Current: The Dialectics of Hacking, forew. Richard Barbrook, MIT Press, Nov 2022, 264 pp, PDF. Publisher.

• Publications on FLOSS on Monoskop/log

• more

Documentary films

• FLOSSOFÍA: el software libre en el arte, dir. Ernesto Romero, 2009, 83 min. With footage from the 2008 editions of Make Art and Piksel festivals.

• Art Meets Radical Openness, 2009, 26 min. Documentary of the 2009 festival edition. Film conceived by Annalisa Cannito, Chui Yong Jian, Santiago Bence.

Resources

• Alternative Internet, a collection of networks, tools and devices aiming at decentralisation.

• Anti-Subscription Catalogue, a catalogue of non-subscription, free, open-source, and one-time fee software.

• Open Source People and Community

• Eightycolumn (80c; archived), a network of free culture aware educators in art, music and design education.

See also

Commons, Community servers, Copyright activism, Data activism, Federated networks, Hacker culture, Libre graphics, Live coding, Pure Data, Shadow libraries, Software art, SuperCollider