I hope this thread is relevant to the purposes of the forum.
I want this thread to document references of philosophies of FOSS - “freedom”, “openness” etc., - from literature, arts, cinema etc. I hope it would help in introducing newcomers to the philosophy.
Here’s a submission to begin with: Margaret Atwood’s Freedom - It starts with an essay - we’re double-plus unfree
The author comments on the digital surveillance. She compares the growing number of “IDs” to that of cattle being ear-tagged. I’m sure you’d relate to recent data breaches of DigiYatra etc., after reading this essay.
The book then follows up with selected chapters from two of the author’s novels - Handmaid’s Tale and Hag-Seed. These chapters focus on freedoms of the characters in those stories.
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This book helped me build vocabulary of FOSS. It has good details on history and economics of FOSS movement. I found it as a very good introduction to the subject.
Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Eghbal | Goodreads
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I’m reading the biography of John von Neumann, one of the early brains behind the modern computer. It is said that he is also the early proponent of “open source” idea.
Neumann wrote and widely circulated EDVAC report that clearly laid down the von Neumann computer architecture. It led to a patent dispute as there were other scientists who wanted to start a company and sell computers based on this design. Neumann won the trial. One of the reasons he wanted to put the EDVAC idea out was that he wanted rapid advancement in computing technology (so that he can use computers to solve many other problems of his interest).
His architecture became public knowledge and apparently many computers in 1940s-50s were designed based on it.
Of course, his reason may not be “Freedom” as we define in FOSS movement. But nevertheless, he fought the initial battle in making computing free from patenting 
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The Fountainhead | Goodreads offers a moral guide to anyone who identifies themselves as a creator (opensource contributor, developer). The work ethic of the protagonist, Howard Roark, is something developers can relate to. It comes close to the idea of Karma Yoga.
There is a monologue on how technology advanced in history. How great creators take something from their previous generation, add more value and send it forward. That monologue has glimpses of FOSS philosophy. Of why we say FOSS is important for technological advancement.
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This book does not relate much with the FOSS Philosophy, but instead it relates more towards Tinkering. This book is a collection of Feynman exploring multiple things from the 1st page till the last page. And, I think tinkering with anything which you find interesting relates generally somewhere with the FOSS Philosophy ?
This book is a collection of chapters were Feynman seems to exploring and tinkering with newer things. I wrote a short blog reviewing it and it includes a list of my favorite chapters from the book.
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A few excerpts and poems from the book -
Why Do You Fear My Way So Much? Poems and Letters from Prison by Dr G.N. Sai baba
Extract from My Fellow Prisoners poem
My fellow
Prisoners,
Don’t be agonised,
You’ll get free soon.
**
From the treacherous Facebook,
the high walls of the Worldwide Web,
and the shackles of the conjuring screens.
…
The lures of their net,
the baits of their hooks
made you the prisoners
trapped in the data.
**
My fellow
Prisoners,
Don’t be agonised,
You’ll get free soon.
**
You’ll overcome the databanks,
cease to be the votebanks,
and freed of the digital gallows.
**
You’ve nothing to lose,
but the chains of the data,
you’ve a world to win.
Netizens of the world unite!
Extract from O Joe, My Fellow Indentured Citizen
Digitised is your individual self
solidifying your identity beyond
your material and spiritual existence.
**
Enshrined is your citizenship contract
with your electronic nation
in the digital temple’s sanctum sanctorum.
**
You are uniqued,
12-digited,
eternally nationalised.
**
Another uniqueness is bestowed upon you, like your own
aeons’ old caste to display on your sleeves.
**
O Joe, my fellow indentured citizen,
let’s go in search of bread
on the digital highways of the nation.
Some aphorisms on data:
Data is the diet par excellence
of the diabolic elections.
Like money begets money,
data breeds data.
Data greases the palms
of the ruling machine.
Your personal data
shapes your shadow
that surveils every corner of your life.
The prices of crude oil fall
as the data, the new oil of democracies surges
with mystic powers.
To graduate as a super-democracy
produce more data,
less food grains.
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Interesting take by Amit Varma on Ramayan as an open-source epic
Imagine it as a book on Git with contributions from different authors from different regions. Not there are 300+ branches, and we choose the branch of our liking
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