This is, first and foremost, a textbook about how to create software collaboratively, using a community development model.

Some people call the result of such work by the name free software. Some people call it open source software. Some folks call it both: free and open source software. Some people throw in libre to specify a particular meaning of free, and call it free/libre open source software. Frequently one will see these abbreviated into the terms FOSS or FLOSS.

There are valid reasons for the usage of these different terms in different contexts, but for the sake of simplicity, we use the term FOSS primarily in this book, with the tacit understanding that all terms mean virtually the same thing in our chosen context.

Enough of the pep talk. It's time to get started.