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Christopher Kelty has written a book on the cultural importance of open source software and made it freely available under a CC license. It looks at free software from both a technical and social perspective, allowing for greater insights into its significance for today and for tomorrow.

This is a very interesting and thought provoking ebook. Not only does it provide a helpful historical view of how free software came to be, but it posits the impact of such a phenomenon on industry and culture. I particularity liked the view that the pervasiveness of free software - thanks to the Internet - is such that free software itself is instigating much change beyond its original perceived sphere of influence, being software applications. A good read if open source software, free software and impacts on culture interests you.

Interesting open text book created by the Free Technology Academy that outlines the history, culture, and use of free software. "Free Software" is ambiguous in English and not the commonly used terminology. However, in Spanish and French it is possible to make a distinction between "Libre software" and "gratis" software. The authors argue that the term "open source" is too technical focused, while "libre software" better focuses on the rights of the users and community. Interesting and worth skimming for reference. Available in English, Spanish, Catalan, and Italian. Authors: Jesús M. González-Barahona, Joaquín Seoane Pascual, Gregorio Robles Coordinators: Jordi Mas Hernández, David Megías Jiménez Licenses: GNU Free Documentation License, Creative Commons Attribute ShareAlike License Information: 291 Pages; 3.2Mb Free software is increasing its presence in mainstream media and in debates among IT professionals, but it is still unknown for many people.

Introducción al software libre, en Español: http://ocw.uoc.edu/informatica-tecnologia-y-multimedia/introduccion-al-software-libre/materiales/view?set_language=es

Muy buenos aportes @koobreader

"Free software is fundamental to providing user privacy. The ability for third parties to continue providing security updates is vital for ensuring user safety. But in the real world, we are failing to make this argument - the freedoms we provide are largely theoretical for most users. The nominal security and privacy benefits we provide frequently don't make it to the real world. If users do wish to take advantage of the four freedoms, they frequently do so at a potential cost of security and privacy. Our focus on the four freedoms may be coming at a cost to the pragmatic freedoms that our users desire - the freedom to be free of surveillance (be that government or corporate), the freedom to receive security updates without having to purchase new hardware on a regular basis, the freedom to choose to run free software without having to give up basic safety features."

Relationship between 'free software' and 'open software'.

An alternative perspective on "openness".

The argument will be with us for a very long time. I think this is based on the side of the fence that one is sitting on. It is just like a case of what came first a chicken or an egg. The fact is Open has place to occupy in our learning space. The jury is still out there.

Thanks for sharing this well presented write up. Big question put forth is are we really getting the outcomes expected from the open society. Open vs. quality is a big issue. At times restricting access helps a great deal.

"It is the first TEDx talk of the founder of Free Software movement. Stallman, RMS for short, has changed the world with his vision of freedom for the digital age. He launched the GNU operating system, used with Linux as a component, and inspired the development of Creative Commons licences and Wikipedia project. In this talk, Stallman describes how nonfree programs give companies control of their users and what users can do in order to recover control over their computing."

"To help students start new software projects without breaking the bank, GitHub, Bitnami, Crowdflower, DigitalOcean, DNSimple, HackHands, Namecheap, Orchestrate, Screenhero, SendGrid, Stripe, Travis CI and Epic Game's Unreal Engine are launching the GitHub Student Developer Pack, a new program to give students free access to their tools." A great example of Open Access to developer tools and software.

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has worked with the National Security Agency (NSA) on the release of Niagarafiles (or Nifi, to the initiated) technology designed to "automate data flows" among multiple computer networks. The software is free and open source (so is available to the public) through the Apache Software Foundation.

A paper that gives an introduction or tutorial to the Free/Open Source Software. Relevant to our discussion for module 1 are part II and III. Part II gave a brief history for such a movement. Part III explained in brief four components of F/OSS: the license (yes even something open needs a license), the community, the development process and only lastly is the software itself

LaTeX is a high-quality typesetting system; it includes features designed for the production of technical and scientific documentation. LaTeX is the de facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents. LaTeX is available as free software.

LaTex is a document preparation system programmed in free software. It is also a document markup language. It is a very useful tool to create scientific documents in many fields, but especially appropriate to write mathematical expresions. Among its advantages, it has different dictionaries for many languages, it can be adapted to any style class and gives a professional look to any document you write. In addition, manage of bibliography references is quite simple and flexible. Latex comprises a collection of TeX macros and program to process TeX documents and convert them in PDF documents, but also in HTML, PS, EPS, DVI, etc. The other main advantage is that LaTex document scan be opened with any text editor since they consist of plain text and do not contain hidden formatting codes or binary instructions.

Difícil para personas no versadas en informática, pero seguro muy útil cuando te haces con él :) Gracias por compartirlo. Saludos.

Next: New economic models: Externally Up: Free Software / Open Previous: Cooperation and competition   Contents The economic impact of open source models is going to be very high, not only in the software industry, but in society in general. In this section, we discuss in some detail some of the more foreseeable issues related to this impact.

There's a loto of debating after Rifkin's book publishing: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5558

Open source software also demonstrates how prices fall for consumers in a free and competitive market. Niche markets develop that serve as means of income for developers and programmers. The availability of free distributions serves as advertising for these specialists.

This journal needs authors. I was thinking of collaborative writing, iteration, article building.

Satya Nadella's rapid reinvention of Microsoft continues. In yet another bid to make up lost ground in the long march to the future of computing, Microsoft is now open sourcing the very foundation of .NET-the software that millions of developers use to build and operate websites and other large online applications-and it says this free... Not much to add on this that won't outright plagiarize the author, but anyone who knows anything about software and operating systems knows this is huge. Open source software is traditionally more nimble and able to deal with various threats in a more timely fashion, whereas Microsoft has to get a team on it, perfect it, and roll out updates to million of customers who may not even know what to do with it once it hits their inbox. Anyone with a Linux machine at home can search, copy and paste the code to fix almost any problem they discover, and be back at work within minutes. The parallels to Open Knowledge are numerous.

handy page from Ubuntu community wiki with links to the main listings for open alternatives to mainstream commercial applications

Are you a new linux user? (and why not give a linux a try! There are many great, stable, simple to use distributions out there now! And you can try many of them out with out even installing via live cd) The GUI is great, but to "unlock the POWER" it is great to learn about a few more advanced commands. I don't bother memorizing the command, but you will be amazed at the things you can easily figure out how to do with Linux, making your computing life easier and more powerful... The website is very helpful, and the book version is free and CC.

I LOVE linux. I have let my brain turn to iOS mush in recent years, but since it's open source, I was able to google --er search via duck duck go-- fixes for a wifi connection issue and that shellshock thingie. And in far less time than it ever took to fix a Microsoft or WIndows issue. There are guys you can find online who will ship you a machine pre-loaded with Linux or Ubuntu or Debian, if you can't or don't want to bother with wiping and doing it yourself. If an easily distracted and slightly airheaded person like me can handle it, imagine how a more 'normal' person can do! Great post. Thanks for sharing. In fact, all your shares are interesting.

The official home of the Python Programming Language

Open source is the future. Obvs, Microsoft et.al. paved the way, but moving forward, the route to privacy and access is via free software that can be adapted on the fly.

Microsoft también tiene un sitio sobre "open source" llamado Codeplex (https://www.codeplex.com/), aunque no siempre se debe fiar (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/lest-codeplex-perplex.es.html), hablan de open source, pero no de software libre.

Cursos Abiertos de universidades IberoAmericanas de la red Universia Está dirigido a manejar una aplicación de software libre (GIMP), gratuita y multiplataforma, dedicada al tratamiento y creación de imágenes. Su dominio y disponer de nociones sobre resolución de imagen, formatos, etc. va a hacer que el uso del curso tenga que depender menos de otras personas y/o programas para disponer de imágenes para presentaciones, trabajos, páginas webs, etc. Fecha de inicio: 2 de septiembre de 2014 INSCRIPCIÓN ABIERTA Duración: 9 semanas (27 horas de estudio estimadas)

"The current crisis, the deepest and longest in the history of capitalism, has opened a debate around the world about what appears, more clearly with each passing day, to be the simultaneous destruction of the two principal institutions of social and economic life: the State and the market. Never in living memory has the economic system been so universally questioned. On the other hand, never before have technical capacities been so powerful, and, more importantly, so accessible to people and small organizations. In fact, never before have so many small businesses taken part in the world market. Nearly free [gratis] P2P communication technologies let them create the largest commercial networks in history. The emergence of free software (which, by itself, represents the largest-ever transfer of value to the economic periphery) empowered them with unexpected independence. Millions of small businesses around the world, especially in Asia, were able to coordinate among themselves this way and hone their products just as new markets were opening up to them. It's "globalization of the small." It's not a marginal phenomenon: never before have so many people around the world gotten out of poverty."

The paper addresses the general concept of open knowledge and standards, and expounds terms and definitions related and contiguous with the liberalization of knowledge; such as open data, open access, free formulas, and free software licenses , In addition to listing some of the international experiences in many subjects covered by the paper

"Not long ago producing multimedia digital content required expensive equipment and deep levels of technical expertise. Now anyone can create, publish, and share compelling works with nothing more complex than a web browser. Open licensed media is easy to find/re-use, and combing that with our own content and a set of free tools, means we have powerful ways to express ideas beyond text and bullet points. "