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Suggested Readings

Open source theory/community/culture/licensing

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 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

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-s...

History, Theory and the Anthropology of mapping

Organizing Place and Space: the power of mapping

  • Corburn, Jason. 2005. Street Science: Community Knowledge and Environmental Health Justice. Cambridge: MIT Press.

  • Brody, Hugh. 1981. Maps and Dreams. New York: Pantheon.

  • Burnett, Graham. 2000. Masters of all they Surveyed: Exploration, Geography and a British El Dorado. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  • Harley, J.B. “Deconstructing the Map” in Writing Worlds: Discourse, text & metaphor in the representation of landscape. Eds. Trevor J. Barnes and James S. Duncan. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.

  • Harley, J.B. “Maps, Knowledge, and Power” in The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the symbolic representation, design and use of past environments. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

  • Latour, Bruno. 1990. “Drawing Things Together.” In Representation in Scientific Practice. ed. Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar. Cambridge: MIT Press.

  • Mitchell, Timothy. Colonizing Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

  • Monmonier, Mark. Cartographies of Danger: Mapping Hazards in America. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1997.

  • Spying with Maps: Surveillance Technologies and the Future of Privacy. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2002.

  • Paglen, Trevor. 2009. Experimental Geography: form Cultural Production to the Production of Space. in Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography and Urbanism. Nato Thompson Ed. Mevillehouse Publishing.

  • Robinson, Arthur, and Barbara Petchenik. The Nature of Maps: Essays toward Understanding Maps and Mapping. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1976.

  • Soja, Edward W. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory

  • Winichakul, Thongchai. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 1994

Citizen Science and Civic Science


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