Reflection Week 2(Open Source Software)

Reflection Week 2 (Open Source Software)

In our second week of lecture, we are required to choose one topic that we would like to critic on and share with our members. There are 10 topics given based on the course pro-forma that should be done in pairs. My friend and I decided to choose the topic on Open source software. We have divided our task specifically in order to complete the assignment given.

Based on the research that we have done, we noticed that an Open Source Software is a software that can be used freely or without any charge. As an essential part of teaching and studying in era, schools can avoid themselves from paying licensing course and put resources to other uses if they use Open Source Software. The most commercial one is Linux and tools that work on its platforms. Based on our research, we have learned that Linux is powerful and it is free causing it to be more attractive and friendly-user.

Open Source software offers benefit to the user based on a few projects handled by Red Hat, a stable company behind GNU/Linux. They had developed The Open Source Now Project which providing the educators with an introduction to OSS in education, a discussion list, and links to a wide variety of other OSS in education sites. Under that particular program is Simple End User Linux – Education which preparing the discussion list about the uses of Linux in education system.

Apart from that, it also provides a database of case studies and links to current projects like a variety of software for mathematics and art. Those selected programs can save schools from wasting hundreds of dollars in software expenditure per computer, and run on all common school platforms

In the aspect of education, the use of Open Source software can assist the student to understand more about the widely computer science community and to the practice of peer- review.