The Reflection of the Week:
We had a nice debate on Open Source Software (OSS) in this week. In recent years, we have heard more about that and maybe it will take more places in our educational, social, and economic life. OSS is like a freedom of users on codes, sources, tools, etc, in order to use, copy, redistribute, share, and modify them. It sounds good to freely reach, download and use them in terms of your needs.
OSS is a nice example of Constructivism, which is one of the learning theories. If we look at OSS deeply, we will see a lot of participants who involve in it and share ideas, opinions, codes, tools to construct new productions and outcomes. Collaboration is one of the key points in OSS and enables people to create some goods in short time.
For the benefits and advantages of the OSS, I can say that you can save not only money but also your time. For example, you can download some codes and modify them in terms of your needs. Also, OSS can be used in a community by helping and supporting each other. However, there are some concerns about OSS. For instance, OSS that has a lot of participants who involve in considers the quality of works, which needs some standardization to improve the quality of works.
I think OSS is similar to human life. I mean each culture and civilization made some contribution to our technology and science we have by sharing, changing and improving ideas, tools, and products. In my opinion, OSS will be more important and affect our life in the future.
The example of the week:
The University of Colorado creates interactive science simulations that can be freely downloaded from www.phet.colorado.edu. This project is open to teacher ideas and contributions to create interactive simulations. They offer interactive simulations in more than 40 languages. Some of my friends from Turkey use the simulations in their courses.
The quote of the Week:
“If I give you a penny, you will be one penny richer and I’ll be one penny poorer. But if I give you an idea, you will have a new idea, but I shall still have it, too.” Albert Einstein. I think this quote explains very well why we use and improve OSS because I will lose nothing but obtain many valuable thing by sharing ideas.
The picture of the Week:
There are some the example of OSS here. ( Source: http://mappio.com/mindmap/rickny/free-open-source-softwares)
Hello Cesur,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, OSS are very useful strategy for developing and improving new technologies. But I think that this movement is limited to people who have special technical knowledge. More people would be involved if the tools that are used are more simple, something like wiki for example.
Another important issue you didn't mention is related to copyright. While technology simplify information sharing and collaboration, matter get more complicated from legal perspective. Standards and policy can be suggested and implemented, but I think people need to be educated about legal aspects of using technologies specially in cases as OSS.
Best,