Here are many links to help begin with Free Software and find necessary resources or examples to communicate effectively about libre-software related activities.

for enterprises

• create an open source section (or website) listing your contributions to free software (or libre software as "open source" is not so well seen by the free software community)
  • http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Projects/FreeSoftware (previous link)
  • http://developer.novell.com/opensource/
  • http://opensource.hp.com/
  • http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RedHatContributions
• communicate and contribute articles to
  • http://slashdot.org
  • http://lwn.org
  • http://linuxfr.org (french)

promotion of free software

• http://gnu.org
  • http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
  • http://www.gnu.org/doc/book13.html book by RMS (Richard Stallman)
  • all the rest of gnu.org
• http://www.opensource.org/advocacy/faq.php Open Source is the way to go

free software for hardware vendors

Documentations targeted at vendors to understand the pros & cons of working with free software (aren't they hardware vendors first ?)

• http://opencollector.org/Whyfree/open_hardware.html
• Dev:BackGroundGPL (interwiki)
• http://www.aful.org/faqs/FAQConstructeurs.en.html how to work with free software
• http://www.openbsd.org/papers/opencon06-docs/index.html why documentation for hardware is needed
  • http://www.openbsd.org/papers/opencon06-docs/mgp00016.html Noone wants developers to give up
• http://www.kroah.com/log/2007/01/29/#free_drivers you can get helped by libre software developers for your drivers
• http://www.haiku-os.org/blog/mmu_man/2008-11-03/say_what_you_want_from_us_but_not_what_we_dont_want_to_hear_or_how_much_did_we_regress other OSes require documentation of hardware

get listed as friendly to free software

• http://www.vendorwatch.org/ by vendor
• http://dev.librehwdb.tuxfamily.org by product
  • http://dev.librehwdb.tuxfamily.org/tiki-directory_browse.php list of existing resources to be taken into account
• http://linuxdevices.com articles about hardware compatible with GNU/Linux
• http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/index.php identify working USB drivers / hardware for GNU/Linux
• check HwDbExistingResources for other hardware compatibility list

interesting articles to contribute to free software

• http://free-electrons.com/articles many articles about linux kernel
  • http://free-electrons.com/articles/reasons Advantages of Free Software and Open Source in embedded systems
  • http://free-electrons.com/training writing drivers for GNU/Linux
• http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/nopanicing employers: Don't Panic! licensing correctly is not that difficult
• http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/ Linux Device Drivers, Third Edition
• http://producingoss.com/ [en] book producing open source software (cc-by-sa)

examples of hardware vendors contributing to free software

• http://www.opensparc.net/ Sun chose to put specifications for SPARC under GPL

• http://zd1211.ath.cx/wiki/DriverRewrite
  • http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/sys/dev/microcode/zydas/zd1211-licence?rev=1.1&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup firmware with appropriate license for distribution (non-free though ?)
  • http://zd1211.ath.cx/wiki/HardwareEncryption documentation provided (which license ?)

• http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT7621761066.html Nokia 770 feedback about using mostly open-source

• https://linuxfr.org/2007/08/29/23040.html [fr] Neuf box v4 source code published (complying with GPL)
• https://linuxfr.org/~Jeanuel/27269.html [fr] Samsung (Orange) publish source code

avoid bad press in the community

• http://www.busybox.net/shame.html
• http://gpl-violations.org

choice of license

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_license (in our case "use of dual-licensing with free software is for license compatibility, allowing code from differently licensed free software projects to be combined or to provide users the preference to pick a license."
• check DebianLegal for links analyzing some issues and explaining good practices

do not fear software patents

... as they are still illegal in several countries
and free software benefit from some protection as well

• http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/ OIN
  • http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/patents.php position to help free software and particularly Linux against patents
  • http://www.dwheeler.com/blog/2006/04/14/#oin some precisions about patents and oin
• http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/ for Samba for example

business and free software

• http://fedoranews.org/cms/node/1581 [en] Writing a business plan for a FLOSS based business
• http://corp.mandriva.com/webteam/2007/04/06/mandrivas-business-model/ [en] Mandriva’s business model
• add your links or check google free software business model to find relevant links

feedback about contributions to free software, success stories

• https://linuxfr.org/~Youplaboum/25041.html [fr] contributing patches is not always that easy
• https://linuxfr.org/2007/08/01/22791.html [fr] Alfresco "choosing full GPL since the beginning really works"

License of this document

by Benoît Audouard 2006-2007, Quadruple licensed at your choice Art Libre, CC-BY-SA, GPL 2.0+, GFDL - - - -
Cette création est mise à disposition à votre choix sous licence Art Libre - GFDL - contrat Creative Commons BY-SA. - CC-GNU GPL.