Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) presents a significant opportunity to rethink our digital literacy/production practices
Open source digital literacy (OSDL) emphasizes the source in “free and open source”
OSDL requires a shift to an open source attitude regarding the more immediately accessible open-source languages and artifacts (as opposed to software) in digital discourse, and engaging them at the source level:
Media formats for image, sound, and video cannot be readily rendered as editable source. However, open formats are crucial to an overall picture of OSDL:
Open Source digital literacy is problem-oriented; the source is there for inspection, invention, and revision as rhetorical problems arise. Additionally:
OSDL challenges an unquestioned assumption in digital production, namely that visual artifacts are best (read: easily, universally, rhetorically) produced by visual tools.
OSDL is not a short-term, quick-start, for-dummies project that promises entirely immediate, visible results; OSDL requires unlearning many bad habits accrued over ten or fifteen years of point-and-click WYSIWYG production literacy (aka software proficiency).
Like the FOSS movement itself, an open-source approach to digital production literacy can build community within our own ranks as technical communicators, in large part by fostering a shared meta-language for talking about production, while preparing us to contribute meaningfully to extant communities of practice and development already surrounding particular open source languages and software.
This slide show was created using Eric Meyer’s Simple Standards-based Slide Show System (S5), a fully open-source and standards-compliant means of creating and displaying (in any modern, standards-compliant Web browser) slide shows, entirely independent of software like Microsoft PowerPoint or OpenOffice.org Impress.