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Free and Open Source Software Library (HFOSS Spring 2019 edition)

See also CONTRIBUTING.md

Primary purpose

This repository holds a collection of works about free and open source software, broadly conceived. We collect here a wide variety of types of works. These works are collected here primarily as course material which instructors and students can use in the Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development (HFOSS) course (IGME-582), offered by the Rochester Institute of Technology's (RIT) School of Interactive Games and Media (IGM), but also to serve other courses in the FOSS minor offered by IGM at RIT, and then beyond that as a more broadly useful open education resource (OER).

As such a collection of resources, it is both about FOSS, and meant to exemplify a FOSS approach, being collected, maintained, and distributed as closely as possible using the community norms under which FOSS itself is developed and documented. This collection of works is meant to complement a companion repository holding a bibliography or bibliographies, that is, lists of references to works about FOSS.

One practical consideration in including works in this library is to make more flexible use of the material here, and to make the collection more maintainable. Material can be accessed from copies of this library without requiring it be distributed necessarily at the same time, with the same repos holding syllabus, lecture notes, assignments, evaluation tools, and other course material. This allows the course repos to be smaller, allows the use of the same works across multiple courses, and provides more visibility and transparency across related courses.

This is not meant to be a broad and general collection of free digital works. We may include works that are examples of free and open source software and culture but are not about FOSS on a limited basis, but only after careful review.

Acceptable licenses

This library, the companion course material alongside which it is used, and the bibliographic repository which makes reference to it are all meant to be available under licensing that supports broad redistribution of their contents. So, a minimum level of permissions would be those extended by any of the Creative Commons (CC) licenses.

What's more, in the spirit of providing material on which further work can be built, we will prioritize the inclusion of works under more permissive licensing terms [eg, those free from the no-derivatives (ND) or non-commercial (NC) restrictions].

Given the wide net we allow for inclusion (eg, accepting NC and ND restrictions), works that carry reciprocal obligation [attribution (BY) and share-alike (SA)] are also acceptable.

Excluding unlicensed works

We will not include works here when our only ability to do so is via fair use. This is not because of any opposition to the fair use mechanism, but in appreciation of its limitations.

One consideration in excluding works here under fair use is that we do not want to entangle downstream use of this library with questions as to how adoption and redistribution of this library affects the market for the work (one of the considerations for fair use). That is a question that might hinge on very narrow consideration of an exact usage scenario (eg, if it is used for a class, how many students are in the class? Is the material distributed only to the students, or made publically available?).

License of this collection

Any copyright uniquely inherent to this collection or to works created for this collection (eg, this README.md file) will be licensed CC-BY-SA, for which see the file LICENSE.

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