A Concise Introduction to Free and Open Source Software

“Over the past few months, I’ve been reading several books on
the early days of FOSS (I hope to review them later), each based
upon extensive interviews with those that made FOSS happen. That’s
been especially revealing, because in recent years I’ve gotten to
know many of the same individuals, and didn’t always appreciate the
roles that they had played in the early days of FOSS.

“Recently, I tried to put all of this together, and more, into a
single article that could serve as an introduction for people that
might have an incomplete knowledge of FOSS, or might not fully
appreciate all of its many dimensions. While no single article
could ever hope to fully capture such a complex topic, perhaps the
concise overview that I’ve put together can fill in some of the
blanks for people who have only a general idea of what FOSS is all
about. And hopefully it will also provide the incentive for them to
want to learn more (I’ve provided a brief bibliography at the end
for that purpose).

“Here’s the introduction to that article, and you can find the
full text in the August – September issue of Standards Today. If
you have your own observations and thoughts (or differences of
opinion) about what I’ve written, please do leave your comments,
and I can take them into account in any future revision of this
article.”

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