Open Source Software

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

As a Teacher in the Trenches, could you tell us what you think about Open Source software. Are you using any, if so what, if not why? Is your school district using any open-source yet and if so what? If not are they considering and discussing using Open-Source. Can you point us to any resources or good open-source software or articles? ( I have attached the file my students used to research Open Source for you information)

[Sue R.]

Deidra, It is amazing when you start realizing how many people out there are giving things away, isn't it? Just think of how many, many people are spending time and energy contributing to the free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia (which we could have a whole other discussion about, by the way) and you get an idea that there are a lot of like-minded people out there and they are using the internet to connect with each other and build something powerful!

Some of this free stuff is "free" to people to use but comes with ads, like Google's search engine. You don't pay to use it, but others pay to put ads on it. Some of the free programs come with ads that are more annoying, like banners, or inappropriate for students, so you do have to be careful. Some of the free stuff is ad-free--they may be hoping that you will buy the bigger version once you've had a taste of their sample--or they may be free for other reasons. Some people just create a useful program for their own needs, and decide to share it when others ask...

Did that help?

[Sky Davis]

So basically what you are saying is that this is free stuff for our use without the advertisements, and for our needs the open source software will serve the purpose of many costlier brands out there, but people don't know much about them?

[Sue R.]

Sky, Sylvia's response below will help clarify a bit, too.
There are many reasons people don't use these as commonly as the "name brand" software: there is no "guarantee" like the one that comes with buying from a company, there are only users forums (sort of old-fashioned ning's) for tech support, often you need to know a tiny bit about the technical end of things to make the big programs work, when it's new the software users often find the "bugs" that need to be fixed, and early on the name brand software didn't play nice with anyone else's files (for example, the wordprocessors Word and Wordperfect could not read each other's documents, no matter how you tried to save them, back in the beginning...). I'm sure there are other reasons.
But, users like us have figured out a few outstanding pieces worth the effort, school districts might be feeling the crunch money-wise, and these products are getting more sophisticated and user friendly (it's amazing what you can get these days!)

[Deidra Chestnut]

Yes. Thank you!!!

[Jill Whitson]

I have found this discussion very useful. I have picked up some new sites to try out and use. I have had my kids on some of them and they like them so I know I could use it in the classroom. I am in a very small school district so we have extremely limited funds so these sources are great. I hope to continue to pick up more resources as we go along in this course.

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

Great explanation!! thanks

[Sylvia Martinez]

Free software may or may not have ads. Some free software is a trial version with features removed. The hope is that if you like it, you'll want to eventually upgrade to something that costs money.

Open source software is also free, but has an added feature that any user can change the underlying code that makes the program work (called the "source" code). The changed code is then shared with everyone. Or if you don't want to share, you can use your new creation, but you can't sell it. The idea is that a group of dedicated users can work together to make something better than say, one company or one programmer who keeps everything a secret. And no one person makes a profit off the work of others.

You might think that this would cause chaos, with a bunch of people changing things all the time. It brings to mind an image of a ton of people with paintbrushes all trying to paint the same picture at the same time - sounds like a mess!

But these communities tend to work well. If you've seen how Wikipedia works, with people arguing over every revision, but gradually coming to consensus, it's the same thing. That's an open source information portal built on open source code.

Of course, to use open source software, you don't have to know how to change code, you can just use as is. In that case it's not a lot different than free software.

Open source tends to be quite a religion for some people. I think it's because it represents a new way to view both information and code as shared community assets rather than as profitable intellectual property. It also represents a new way to organize people in a flat democratic consensus-building alliance, rather than in a top-down, boss-led structure.

[Sue R.]

Sylvia, thanks for clarifying what it is that makes the "Open source" part of "free open source software." You were "Spot on" and not confusing at all!

[Melissa Beyer]

Thanks for sharing that information. It explains alot of questions I had about how this whole "Open Source" works.

[Cory Triplett]

Thanks for the clarification on opensource.

[Bronwyn Smith]

Thanks for the clarification!

[Veronica Deines]

Thank you! I have a better understanding now!