Notes
Slide Show
Outline
1
Open Source Solutions for Faculty and Students
  • By John Rouda
2
Overview of the Presentation
  • Introduction
  • What is Open Source Software (OSS)
    • Myths of OSS
  • Why use OSS
  • Who makes OSS
  • The Quality of OSS
  • Examples for classroom use
    • MySQL
    • OpenOffice
    • Linux
    • And more!
  • Conclusion
3
Introduction
  • Who am I?
  • Where am I from?
  • Why am I talking about Open Source Software?
4
What is Open Source Software
  • Open Source software (OSS) is computer software whose source code is available under a copyright license that permits users to study, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form. Open Source is different than Freeware, although is very similar.
  • The term Open Source, was created in 1998 for a few reasons, one was to encourage corporate support and the other was to prevent the ambiguity of the word “Free.”
5
Foxtrot
6
Myths of OSS
  • OSS isn’t supported
    • Not always true…
    • Support Forums
    • Purchase support
7
Myths of OSS
  • The main attraction is the price
    • Most companies want good, high quality software, whether it cost money or not.
    • Having things that work is far more important than software cost.
    • Not all Open source software is free.
8
Myths of OSS
  • OSS isn’t for mission critical systems
    • Open source software is tested at a much higher level than most conventional closed source software.
    • There are many open source software applications that can be used in mission critical systems.
    • Some companies that use open source projects for mission critical systems include: Yahoo!, Google, Cisco, IBM and many more!
9
Myths of OSS
  • Big companies don’t use OSS
    • See the previous slide.
10
Myths of OSS
  • OSS isn’t reliable enough for business use
    • If this is true, than the Internet isn’t reliable enough for business use.  O’Reily reports that 75% of all email messages sent from a website form are sent using Open Source code and programs.
    • Over 65% of all web servers run Apache (an open source applications)
11
Myths of OSS
  • It’s all about Linux vs. Windows
    • Although Linux is the most popular Open Source Project, it only makes up a small portion of the Open Source software that is out there.
    • A large number of open source software programs run on both Linux and Windows.
12
Why use OSS?
  • It works
  • Higher quality
  • Faster updates
  • Freedom of use and distribution
  • Price
13
Who Makes OSS?
  • IBM
  • Red Hat
  • SuSe
  • Apple
  • SGI
  • Sun Microsystems
  • Google
14
OSS Quality
  • Coding, designing, testing all parallel?
    • Since the anyone can get the source code, testing, designing new modules, and coding bug fixes and new features can be done simultaneously
  • Developers can see the big picture
    • In the traditional model “only a very few programmers can see the source and everybody else must blindly use an opaque block of bits”
  • Centralized Control for a decentralized world
    • Bringing all the pieces together for a final product.
15
Quality Stats
16
Stats
  • Speed in which bugs were found based on project size
17
Problems with OSS QA
  • Very little unit testing
  • Difficult to estimate time because contributors usually don’t keep consistent schedules.
  • Many contributors like to work on “popular” modules but few work on other, hidden modules.
  • Projects can become difficult to maintain very quickly.
  • Managing volunteers is tricky to say the least
18
Examples for classroom use
  • OpenOffice
  • MySQL
  • Open Work Bench
  • Linux (many different distributions)
  • SourceForge.net
  • FileZilla
  • Partition Image
  • Sakai
19
OpenOffice
  • An OSS project that consist of an office suite similar to that of Microsoft Office.  OpenOffice has the following applications:
20
OpenOffice
21
OpenOffice
22
MySQL
  • The world’s most popular open source database.
  • A Database program that rivals MS SQL, Oracle and other large databases.
  • The most popular database used on the web.
23
Open Workbench
  • An OSS project for creating and managing projects, detailed project plans, creating Gantt, Pert and other charts, managing resources, timelines, etc.
24
Open Workbench
25
Linux
  • An open source operating system based on Unix. Linux has many different distributions including, Fedora, Red Hat, SuSe, and many more.  Currently Linux as a whole is the largest and most popular open source project, mainly because of the vast number of different Linux distributions that are available.
26
Linux (Fedora Core 5)
27
Sakai
  • “Sakai is an online Collaboration and Learning Environment. Many users of Sakai deploy it to support teaching and learning, ad hoc group collaboration, support for portfolios and research collaboration.
  • Sakai is a free and open source product that is built and maintained by the Sakai community. Sakai's development model is called "Community Source" because many of the developers creating Sakai are drawn from the "community" of organizations that have adopted and are using Sakai.”                   sakai.com
28
Sakai features
  • Announcements Tool
  • Assignments Tool
  • Chat Room Tool
  • Discussion Tool
  • Drop Box Tool
  • Email Archive Tool
  • Gradebook
  • Help Tool
  • Site Info Tool
  • Syllabus Tool
  • Synoptic Tool
  • Tests and Quizzes
  • WebDAV
  • Wiki Tool Website Information Tool
  • Website Setup Tool
29
Sakai features
30
Dilbert
31
Conclusion
  • Summary on OSS
  • OSS is about Freedom, not just in price, but also the ability to do what we want with the software.
  • For more information on my research and papers please email me at jrouda@yorktech.com
32
Questions?
  • ?