Posts Tagged ‘open source community’

I have a friend who has been using proprietary software since long. How can I introduce her to the open source community. Which websites should I show?
Yes everyone! I’ve shown her a DVD of Mint and she would like to join the community. Now how to take her into the community?

Let’s say you have an open source community or project and you create something that’s pretty awesome. Would a for profit company be able to take advantage of all the work that was done for free and implement it into a product to make money?

Thanks in advance.

I would like to use public freebies in the open source community, and install them within a corporate sharepoint environment.

I want to create some sites quite similar to Yahoo Answers, but for niche audiences and with public interest in mind–e.g., a special Answers like site for people and families with disability. But I don’t know the first thing about programming. So my idea is to try to reach out to the open source community. Is that all wrong? Or could I get help that way? And how? I look forward to your responses. Thanks for reading.

would like to participate in open source community. I want to develop open source project or want to participate in open source project that already existing. I saw in code.google.com but how to join a existing a project?

How to participate in Open Source Project?
would like to participate in open source community. I want to develop open source project or want to participate in open source project that already existing. I saw in code.google.com but how to join a existing a project?

I have a software idea. In talking with some people, I feel that there will be a lot of interest in this software. I want to use the open source community to create this software. I know that I can host the project on www.sourceforge.net, but how do I get developers to work on it? How do I manage the process, releases, QA etc? I only have an idea and no hands on software development experience. How will this process work? If you can share your experience, it will be great.

Major corporate houses choose open source partly due to the economic gains and mainly due to the control the open source system gives to their hands.

The quest for control is a serious problem in open source arena. The problem sometimes seems trivial, but is really a loss of manpower by the professionals developing programs in open source environment. The problem is seeking too much of control leads developers develop their own solutions for specific issues.

Reinventing the wheel is quite a common problem in open source arena. Instead of using an already popular script, developers tend to write there own scripts for specific tasks. There may be hundreds of scripts with similar functions. There are however instances when a developer has to come up with something new when the existing system doesn’t give the expected results. Developing a code from scratch will be faster than modifying existing program.

Proprietary software, in this sense is quite advantageous here. The developers working with proprietary software hardly ever goes to coming up with their own script as a solution for immediate problems at hand. Then again, proprietary software developers too invent their own wheels, but the goal is to avoid nasty situations like legal problems.

The nature of shared development of software development appeals to the human nature to have control over their destiny. This is true even when they can get customized ‘solutions’ by proprietary software vendors. The future is in open source, but it is premature to make predictions as to when Linux or an open source OS cross runs on 50% of the computers of the world.

Incidentally Microsoft Corporation’s Shared Source Program is an effort by the corporate giant to somehow win the trust of open source community. Though Microsoft allows a peek into the source code, redistribution rights are neither granted nor expected. Only an illusion of free handling of source code, shared source program lacks the democratic nature of all open source initiatives.

Back to open source initiatives – open source initiatives find it quite difficult to get professionally talented developers to the fold, especially in the beginning stages. This is true for almost all open source initiative. The situation reverses when there are enough people in the fold and the project takes momentum at SourceForge.net.

There is one last thought for major corporations that have become so stepping on open source shoulders spare some of your resources to enrich free software and open source software community.

Author: Sam Jose
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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