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FOSS Free Open Source Software

This means you have the freedom to copy and re-use software rather than to have to pay for each version or new edition. Though the term is used inclusively there are differing ideas surrounding each. For example Free software is more about the freedom it gives user whereas Open Source is praised for the strength of the whole peer-to-peer modle that is used.

The whole general idea of FOSS arose in the 1980’s through one Richard Stallman who was the founder and creator of the GNU project which later went on to become the Free Software Foundation. FOSS philosophy simply states that it is the right of every user to use, modify, and distribute computer software for any purpose. The right to use, distribute, modify and redistribute derivative versions, the so called "four freedoms," are based in and representative of an extreme form of anti-discrimination resistant to categorization into the typical “left, center and right” political schema. This element of nondiscrimination, coupled with the broad nature of FOSS's philosophical foundation, enables the easy adoption of FOSS technologies. FOSS's broadly defined freedom acts as an important starting point and one conceptual hinge useful in understanding the wide circulation of FOSS as a set of technologies, signs, methodologies and philosophies. An analysis of the way in which this philosophical and legal form is animated and redirected in particular ways through the use of FOSS technologies and licensing schemes. It is to three contrasting examples of such transmutations that we now turn to.

Hiring a cadre of FOSS developers to work in-house on FOSS software, IBM launched the first nationwide advertising campaign promoting the FOSS operating system GNU/Linux. In their first campaign, they highlighted the ideas of openness and freedom in ways that, unsurprisingly, reinforced their corporate goals. Featuring the recognizable Linux mascot Tux the penguin and a message of "Peace, Love, and Linux," IBM connected using and buying FOSS-based enterprise solutions with 1960's countercultural ideals of sharing, empowerment, and openness.

in recent years, a political position—with a centrist political philosophy distinct from both capitalists like IBM and anti-capitalists like the IMC( Independent Media Centers)—has emerged with FOSS as its primary point of philosophical justification. This group is made up of a growing number of North American and European scholars who have employed the metaphor of a "Commons" to argue for legally protected resources and knowledge for common use by all. The commons endeavor is one example of a larger "liberal" critique of the neoliberal face of "socially destructive unfettered capitalism" which is seen as a threat to democracy (Soros 2001). The information commons movement, largely spearheaded by Lawrence Lessig (1999; 2001; Creative Commons) and David Bollier (2002; Public Knowledge), explicitly points to FOSS as its inspiration. Within the Commons movement, FOSS has been tactically held up as proof that Commons are achievable and as a model of the process through which they can be created; the Creative Commons organization, a key institution within the Commons movement, has adopted FOSS-style licensing to foster and protect other other kinds of non-technical knowledge.

the way in which FOSS is translated also shifts the ways that FOSS developers understand their own actions and motivations. However, people often interpret isolated cases of this process of inspiration, adoption, and re-valuation as indicative of the whole. In this early stage of research into FOSS, it warns us to be wary of wholesale pronouncements on the social, political, and economic nature of FOSS. We should instead remain mindful of the range of the processes by which FOSS has enabled a wide range of ideas and practices of openness.

Researching this paper I learned a lot I didn’t know but it was a difficult paper so I apologize for the use of all the quotes but I did site my sources most of which I found through links on different open source websites.

Cited sources

Boynton, Robert.”The Tyranny of Copyright.” New York Times Magazine January 25, 2004, Sunday.
Bollier, David. Silent Theft: the Private Plunder of our Common Wealth. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Lessig, Lawrence. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York: Basic Books, 1999. The Future of ideas. New York: Random House, 2001.
Prakash, Gyan. Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Soros, George. Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism. New York: Public Affairs,
2000.
Terranova, Tiziana. “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Global Economy.” Social
Text. (18): 2: 33-57, 2000.
Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books, 2002.

http://www.opensource.org/

http://freeopensourcesoftware.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open_source_software_packages

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html

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