Group:FS Research

Joshua, a staff member of the FSF, has expressed to me the FSF's interest in finding academic papers that discuss software freedom. If enough articles are found, then the FSF could publish a paper linking to and summarizing those articles, adding its own thoughts back into academic discussion.

There hasn't been such an effort at the FSF before, so it will be interesting to see what gets discovered. It will be valuable to know and to demonstrate what academics think about free software, its implications and its uses. If there is actual data, evidence, or insight that shows the value of free software according to peer-reviewed authors, then that corroborates the FSF's message for those who are sceptics.

subject targets

Papers that are of most interest are those that focus on software freedom, especially in the 'hard sciences'. Those in the 'soft sciences', or that discuss 'open source' are also of interest, since sometimes people say 'open source' without realizing how it falls short of what they've demonstrated to truly value. Also, comparison of free software ideals to ideas about open source could be a topic worth discussing.

papers that have been found

• There is an article about using Arduinos to make scientific measuring and logging equipment. Some advantages the author mentions is freedom from vendor-lock-in by hardware manufacturers, better price for equipment, hackability, and extensibility.
• Development of free and opensource GIS software for cartographic generalisation and occupancy area calculations

useful software

Joshua has pointed out zotero, which is an AGPL extension for firefox. It's useful for keeping track of articles you are interested in.