A listing of some useful readings from Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) culture/licensing/community/theory, as we attempt to apply some lessons towards our own community at PLOTS:

Richard Stallman on why the "free" in FOSS means "free as in freedom, not as in beer": http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

[The Apache Foundation](http://apache.org/) is the nonprofit behind the Apache web server and over 100 other open source projects. 

Mako Hill: "Open source advocates must defend their thesis that freely developed software should, or will with time, be better than proprietary software. Free software supporters can instead ask, 'How can we make free software better?' In a free software framing, high quality software exists as a means to an end rather than an end itself." - http://mako.cc/writing/hill-when_free_software_isnt_better.html

Different ethical perspectives on open source production, by Santa Clara University's Markkula Center:  http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/open-source.html 

###Governance, decisionmaking in FOSS###

OpenStreetMap Foundation and structure: http://blog.osmfoundation.org/about/ and 

* Membership (which is paid and voting): http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Membership
* Working Groups: http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Groups

The Apache Foundation's How It Works page: http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#meritocracy

Mozilla on governance: http://www.mozilla.org/about/governance.html

Wikimedia Foundation: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Frequently_asked_questions

###Open Source Hardware###

An emerging field not nearly as well defined/developed as FOSS but with obvious overlap for the PLOTS community.

Phillip Torrone of Make Magazine on the ethics of sharing open source hardware designs: http://blog.makezine.com/2012/02/14/soapbox-the-unspoken-rules-of-open-source-hardware/