Lydia Pintscher (ed.): Open Advice: FOSS: What We Wish We Had Known When We Started (2012)

Open Advice is a knowledge collection from a wide variety of Free Software projects. It answers the question what 42 prominent contributors would have liked to know when they started so you can get a head-start no matter how and where you contribute.

Free Software projects are changing the software landscape in impressive ways with dedicated users and innovative management. Each person contributes something to the movement in their own way and to their abilities and knowledge. This personal commitment and the power of collaboration over the internet is what makes Free Software great and what brought the authors of this book together.

This book is the answer to “What would you have liked to know when you started contributing?”. The authors give insights into the many different talents it takes to make a successful software project, coding of course but also design, translation, marketing and other skills. We are here to give you a head start if you are new. And if you have been contributing for a while already, we are here to give you some insight into other areas and projects.

With contributions by Georg Greve, Armijn Hemel, Evan Prodromou, Markus Kroetzsch, Felipe Ortega, Leslie Hawthorn, Kevin Ottens, Lydia Pintscher, Jeff Mitchell, Austin Appel, Thiago Macieira, Henri Bergius, Kai Blin, Ara Pulido, Andre Klapper, Jonathan Leto, Atul Jha, Rich Bowen, Anne Gentle, Shaun McCance, Runa Bhattacharjee, Guillaume Paumier, Federico Mena Quintero, Mairin Duffy Strode, Eugene Trounev, Robert Kaye, Jono Bacon, Alexandra Leisse, Jonathan Riddell, Thom May, Vincent Untz, Stuart Jarvis, Jos Poortvliet, Sally Khudairi, Noirin Plunkett, Dave Neary, Gareth J. Greenaway, Selena Deckelmann, Till Adam, Frank Karlitschek, Carlo Daffara, Dr. Till Jaeger, Shane Couglan

Published in 2012
ISBN 978-1-105-51493-7
Creative Commons BY-SA License
310 pages

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David M. Berry, Giles Moss (eds.): Libre Culture: Meditations on Free Culture, 2nd ed. (2008)

“Libre Culture is the essential expression of the free culture/copyleft movement. This anthology, brought together here for the first time, represents the early groundwork of Libre Society thought. Referring to the development of creativity and ideas, capital works to hoard and privatize the knowledge and meaning of what is created. Expression becomes monopolized, secured within an artificial market-scarcity enclave and finally presented as a novelty on the culture industry in order to benefit cloistered profit motives. In the way that physical resources such as forests or public services are free, Libre Culture argues for the freeing up of human ideas and expression from copyright bulwarks in all forms.”

Publisher Pygmalion Books, Winnipeg, 2008
Res Divini Juris Libre Commons Licence
172 pages
via archive.org

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Hyde, Perez, Safadi, Adams, Fuzz, Phillips, Thorne: An Open Web (2011)

This book was created in a Book Sprint over 5 days between January 17 and January 21, 2011 in Berlin. It was an enormous achievement by the handful of people brought together to write a Book about the ‘Open Web’. The event was hosted by transmediale.11 and the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin (CHB), based on an idea and concept initiated by transmediale artistic director Stephen Kovats and Adam Hyde of FLOSS Manuals. To write the book the authors used the FLOSS Manuals installation of Booki.

The book takes the view that the Open Web is an essential technology and cultural practice for the future of the Internet and human society. The Web as we know it has had a positive and even revolutionary impact on key areas of science, technology, politics and culture. It has opened up new fields of individual rights and responsibilities, in terms of legal structures, community standards, privacy and the control of data. The rapid pace of technological change is bringing ever more powerful threats (and opportunities) to the Open Web.

Written by Adam Hyde, Alejandra Perez, Bassel Safadi, Christopher Adams, Mick Fuzz, Jon Phillips,
Michelle Thorne
Publisher in 2011
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license
63 pages

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