Talks/FLOSS Overview

History

I. Early History

  - printer / AI lab
  - software sharing commune
  - reclaiming movement for freedom

II. Early Structure

  - Free Software Definition
  - Free Software Doundation
  - Copyleft
  - GPL
  - Strong orientation as social movement
  - GNU Project and Replacement for UNIX

III. Moving Beyond GNU

  - BSDs, Minix, and the HURD
  - X Windows and struggles with commericialization and openness
  - Linux Torvalds and Linux
  - Distributions
  - Apache Web Server

IV. Open Source

  - frusteration with free software personality and posturing with
    business interests and the late 90s tech bubble and dotcom boom
  - Eric Raymond and CatB, Bruce Perens
  - OSD Creation
  - Motivations epmhasizing the pragmatic beneifts of ree software
  - Opposite of a schism

V. Going Mainstream (ups and downs)

  - Breakthrough was with Netscape Navigator releasing code to their
    browswer
  - Many other companies ended up getting carried away in the boom
  - Dotcom bust
  - Remergence of people who care about liberty and freedom
    - Social movements again
    - Governments in Europe/S. America/etc.

VI. Adapting FOSS Principles

  - Many groups have been explicity inspired and have created lots of
    other "open source ___" (medicine, invention, literature, music,
    etc).

  - Often inspired by ideas of:
    - massively parallel production
    - large volunteer communities
    - high levels of "user innovation" and lead user

  - buildings most frequently on licenses of FOSS
    - copyleft and gpl style legal mechanisms
  - in some cases, making mroe normatively sort of descriptions and
    calls for free things

VII. What does FOSS production means?
  
  - A social movement?
  - An adherence to some conception of openness
  - An attempt to harness certain types of work
  - An attempt to challenge/change the nature of production in a
    depper/more general way