What Does Open Source Mean To Me?

When I hear the term Open Source thrown around, a lot of abstract ideas come to mind. Words like collaboration, cooperation, and community. Until only a week ago when I started taking this course Open Source wasn’t something I thought much about. I loosely understood some of the general advantages that come from organizing a project in such a way, and knew of the classic amazing examples of open source done right like the Linux Kernel and Firefox.

Some of the potential advantages are things that we have discussed already in class and that are mentioned in the assigned readings. By making a code base publicly available and allowing anyone to at least attempt to participate in its development, ideas can develop in amazing directions that the original creator may not have even considered. Testing and debugging get essentially outsourced to a free community of people who might approach the code base from novel angles when looking for vulnerabilities or inefficiencies.

I’m not sure how legitimate of a concern this is, but I think there are some financial disadvantages that might emerge in a project that is open sourced. I remember a few years ago watching a documentary on 3D printing. One of the companies featured in the film was initially very committed to open sourcing their entire code base. This conviction seemed to be mainly about generating good PR for their company, and after some initial success the company reneged on that promise. This may be a corner-case, but that whole scenario seemed really sketchy and kind of dishonest. I feel like if you start a project as open source, you should do all you can to maintain that standard. Those responsible for making these kinds of decisions were in a tough place where they had to weigh their responsibility to do right by their company against their ideological convictions. I guess the disadvantage here (which is kind of unavoidable given the nature of open source) is that if you are committed to open source you are making a commitment to a movement larger than just the success of your own project.

Open Source Projects I Use

Firefox

Firefox was the first non-standardly installed web browser that I used. Firefox is a free and open source web browser developed and maintained by Mozilla Foundation. I find it intersting and sort of inspirational as one of the first web browsers to challenge internet explorer for market share while also being an open source project. There are many other web browsers such as Safari and Google Chrome.

MediaWiki

MediaWiki is a free open source software that is used in many wiki based sites. For example, Wikipedia and Wiktionary both run MediaWiki. This is a tool that many people have to thank for making acquisiton and maintenance of all kinds of information a more feasible task. Some alternate wiki softwares are Tiki and DokuWiki.

GNU/Linux OS

While I don’t do any work with Linux based operating systems directly, we are all greatly impacted by its creation and continued prevalence. I think it’s the most widely installed operating system. I know that Android phones make use of an OS with a Linux-based kernel and that it is really common in embedded systems. As an open source project it is easily edited and customizable, which explains why it is so popular in situations where it is important to tailor the OS specifically for the system at hand. Windows and MacOS are non-open source operating systems that are potential alternatives.

Eclipse

I initially thought that Eclpise was basically just an IDE, but their website says otherwise. According to https://www.eclipse.org/home/newcomers.php, Ecplise is an “…open source community whose projects are focused on building an extensible development platform, runtimes and application frameworks…”. I’ve worked extensively with the Eclipse IDE in both academic and professional environments, and it’s amazing to have free access to such a useful and ubiquitous part of the developers toolkit. The forums are always incredibly robust when looking for help with a new feature or a bug you might encounter, and this is definitely partly a result of how ubiquitous Eclipse is. Some alternates are NetBeans and IntelliJ.

Some Potential Questions For Tom

1)

What is the largest enterprise that makes use of Red Hat, Inc.’s services?

2)

Is it a concern that it could be easier for people with malicious intentions to find security vulnerabilities in applications that run open source code?