Open web publishing

Concepts

A medium like web publishing has practically no barriers to entry and anybody can publish anything. There's a multitude of tools, platforms and networks which support open web publishing. Many free web hosted services have come to be known as Web 2.0 technologies, a second generation of web applications that enable any person to publish online with relative ease, form social networks and participate in open web environments with people all over the world. It's largely due to the success of free and easy to use tools that has led to wide adoption of open web publishing including but not limited to literary works, musical works, software and other works dealing with information, including electronic media.

Copyright

Works published on the open web are protected by national and international copyright laws. Works are usually owned by the author or publisher. Open web publishing has empowered people to publish their own works, and it is common for the author to be the publisher. With many people wanting to share their creativity and allow their work to be reused, remixed and built upon, there is a choice of copyright licenses.

Widely used copyright licenses for publishing on the open web:

Examples of open web publishing services

Wikipedia - free encyclopedia that anyone can edit
YouTube - video sharing website
Blogger - blog creation and hosting service
Del.icio.us - social bookmarking web service
Digg - non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control

Examples of web based publishing FOSS

Some popular examples of web based publishing tools available as free web hosted services and available as FOSS for download to run on your own server.

WordPress - Blogging platform
MediaWiki - Wiki platform
Plone - Content managment system
Moodle - learning managment system

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