Introduction
“Why do they call it ‘FLOSS’ when it doesn’t clean your teeth?”
Are you a non-nerd, a human being who happens to use computers without living inside them? Does that make you curious to find out what the buzz regarding open source and free software is all about? What’s in it for you? Does it work? Is it fun and easy to use? How is it made and who makes it? And how ‘free’ or ‘open’ is it, really? Have you looked long and hard for answers to questions like these in plain English? If that’s the case, ‘FLOSS is not just good for teeth’ could be just what you are looking for.
Impress your techie buddies with the fact that you care for your kernel, and open yourself to a whole new world of concepts that offer challenging and exciting ideas about creativity, collaboration and coding. ‘Floss’ geeks, make yourselves understood to other human beings – download and distribute ‘FLOSS is not just good for teeth’ to friends, family and colleagues, so they can finally know and appreciate what keeps you awake while they sleep.
‘FLOSS is not just good for teeth’ is a collaboratively produced introduction to the concepts that underlie free and open source software, written specially for the non-technical reader, at the Sarai Programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
Read
The book can be accessed and downloaded from Sarai archive.
Production
Editorial/Design Coordinator: Monica Narula.
Text: Ben Olin, Aniruddha ‘Karim’ Shankar, G Karunakar.
Illustration: Parismita Singh.
Design: Mrityunjay Chatterjee
Produced and Designed at the Sarai Media Lab, CSDS.
License
The book is shared under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 India license.
Any part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the prior written permission of the publishers for educational and non-commercial use. The contributors and publishers, however, would like to be informed.
Disclaimer
This document has been produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of the partners in the ‘Towards a Culture of Open Networks’ initiative, and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the European Union.