Intro to FOSS (Activity)
Contents |
Intro to FOSS
Preparation:
| Description | |
| Source | ? |
| Prerequisite Knowledge | None |
| Estimated Time to Completion | 60-90 minutes |
| Learning Objectives | |
| Materials/Environment | Access to Internet/Web and web browser. |
| Additional Information | ? |
| Rights | Licensed CC BY-SA |
| Turn In |
Background:
Welcome to the exploration of Open Source Software!
Directions
Expectations
The world of FOSS is large and complex. Producing a large software project is an complex and challenging process. As learning anything with high complexity, at first the amount to be learned may feel overwhelming. As you incrementally gain knowledge, you will gradually become more familiar with FOSS as well as becoming comfortable with not knowing all aspects of a project. Therefore:
- We expect that you will feel lost. This
- We understand that feeling lost may feel uncomfortable feeling lost
Talk about being productively lost - We expect you to be lost and we understand that the feeling may be uncomfortable Expectation is that you will feel overwhelmed, as if you were going to a foreign land.
- http://quaid.fedorapeople.org/TOS/Practical_Open_Source_Software_Exploration/html/ch-Foreword.html
- http://quaid.fedorapeople.org/TOS/Practical_Open_Source_Software_Exploration/html/sn-Foreword-Why_Traditional_Student_Projects_Are_Ineffective.html
Overview of FOSS
The following readings provide an introduction to FOSS
- [1] - Sections 1 History, 3.1 Computer Software
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_software - Sections 1-3, 5, 6
- http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/index.html#catbmain
- http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s11.html
Example
Discusses the foundation of Firefox which grew out of Netscape:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla - Sections 1, 2.1
Humanitarian FOSS
Humanitarian FOSS (HFOSS) is FOSS that does some social good. HFOSS projects can range from disaster management, micro-finance, health care, education and more. We have chosen to focus on HFOSS as the altruistic nature of HFOSS has the potential to attract more computing majors, and women in particular.
