Intro to Open Source

When I think of the term ‘open source’ I imagine a giant group of people from all around the world sitting around a giant table discussing on how to best engineer a project. That’s what I imagine underlies the initial purpose of open source: to bring together people from a variety of backgrounds who might differ in their interests and excel in their personal skillsets. However, I’m still relatively new towards open source projects and that’s the main reason why I decided to take this class this semester. I want to learn more about what open source development is, and how I can contribute to different projects in the future.

After doing some research on what open source really is, open source projects are defined as projects that are readily available to the public and it is software that can be freely used by the public. In comparision, closed source projects and private projects, if I had to guess, most commonly created by for-profit companies that contain company-sensitive information. A clear pro to closed source projects is by keeping some of the technology private and not readily available, the creators of the project can benefit financially from the sale and distribution of the project.

Although open-source development can help to spearhead innovation and collaboration, there are serveral cons that come to mind when considering creating and/or using an open-source project.

1. Lack of Code Support and Regulation
   Businesses who decide to use open-source projects will most likely need to rely on community-driven support such as forums or documentation in order to find the information they need. This quite be quite lackluster and time-consuming on their end.
2. License Concerns
   Although open-source software is open to the public, there are limitations to what the software can be used for. For example, the company is not able to use open-source software for their proprietary software strategy, so this puts limitations onto the use cases of open-source software.

4 Projects that Changed the World

Git - Since we’re using Github as a shared workspace for this semester, I thought I would put Git first on this list. Git, essentially an online folder to contain edits and previous changes in your code, is clearly such an impactful project that is now industry standard, and its impacted how I’ve been able to store and share my own projects.

VScode - I think ever since I was first introduced to VScode, I haven’t been able to switch back to any previous IDEs. I remember the first one I ever used in a summer program was Atom and then I used Sublime for my year-long high school computer science class until I finally switched over to VScode in college. I love the UI and functionality, and I can’t forget the vs-codepets extension as well :’)

Linux - Possibily the biggest and most influencial open-source project, Linux is a free operating system that runs on many laptops and phones. Behind the scenes, Linux helps power many of the systems and devices I used on the daily, so this is definitely another super impactful project.

Chromium - This opensource project is behind Google Chrome and many other large web browsers and also aims to help make the internet a safer place. Google chrome is my most used browser and is definitely something I use on the daily to help complete daily tasks and search for new information.