Reasons and Best Practices for Adopting Open Source Software
Max Haifei Li
As an associate professor of computer science at Union University, I have used many software packages throughout my teaching career. Some of them are proprietary software packages like Microsoft Office 2010 and Macromedia Dreamweaver. Some of them are open source software like XAMPP and Notepad++. All software packages that I have used for the university are free to me because I don’t have to pay for them out of my own wallet. However, I enjoy open source software more than proprietary software packages for various reasons.
The first reason is freedom and convenience. One frustration that I have with Microsoft Office 2010 is that I cannot give it freely to my students due to the licensing issue. Some students may have Microsoft Office, but it is the old version like Office 2007 or Office 2003. When these students use old version of Microsoft Office to do their homework, they often get lower grades and I have to ask them to use the correct version of Microsoft office. Some students do not have Microsoft Office and I need to ask them to buy it through a discount website. Office 2010 costs about 95 dollars for students and some students simply do not have money buy it. Another frustration with Microsoft Office is the inconsistency of the interface between Windows version of Microsoft Office and Mac version of the same software. It is obvious that we have used Windows version of Microsoft Office in our classroom teaching and I have to tell Mac users (there are a lot of Mac users among college students) that they simply cannot use their Macs for my class. A lot of students are disappointed with that and they feel that they are treated as second-class citizens. As for open source software, I can just tell students to download from websites and they can ready to go.
The second reason is low cost. Even though the basic open source software is free, refined open source software with professional support is usually not free. However, the price is much more affordable when compared with proprietary software. Union University has adopted MoodleRoom, the commercial version of the open source Moodle learning software, for its course management system. Since it is based on the open source software, it is much cheaper than Blackboard that we are currently used. From the training sessions that I have recently gone through, I am thrilled to find new features that I really want but Blackboard does not support.
The third reason is the community support that popular open source software enjoys. I use PHP and MySQL for my teaching of database course. Whenever I have a particular issue, a simple Google search gives me the best clue about the solutions. Sometimes, I need to spend more time to dig deep into the search results, but most issues can be solved in short period of time. Proprietary software vendors control their software and they generally don’t want to let customers know the shortcomings of their software because of the fear of bad publicity. Apple is an example. Apple hides the facts that Macs can also get viruses and does not provide much needed help to users that are actually affected by viruses.
The first best practice advice is to be both open and conservative. “Open” means that you can explore different choices. The choice should be based on your unique situation. "Conservative" means that you need to be careful in choosing which open source software to use for your project. Because of the open nature of OSS, there is no penalty if the founder of the projects decides to abandon the project. As a result, you may get stuck with open source software that is no longer supported by the founder. If you are good at programming and not afraid of DIY (Do It Yourself), you can fix the problem easily because the source code is there. For most people that don’t have time or skill sets to study the source code, the best strategy is to choose the most popular ones.
The second best practice advice is to seek opinions from friends and online communities. The rise and fall of open source software depends on the popularity rating. Generally speaking, the quality of open source software is directly related to its popularity. If you don’t know much about which open source software to use, ask your contacts about their opinions on which open source software to choose from. Opinions from online communities vary dramatically and you should be careful in deciding which source you trust. Your friends and colleagues can give you honest answers to your questions.
Surprisingly, I do not spend a lot of time playing with LibreOffice. The first reason is that Microsoft “bribes” my department and my university so that I can get it for free. The second reason is that I teach Microsoft Office and I have to learn a lot of details about Microsoft Office. I like Microsoft office but I think it becomes too expensive. Ask yourself: what was the last time that you have seen a proprietary software vendor reduces its software price?
Firefox is my favorite browser. Even though Google Chrome is surging in its popularity, I am not a big fan of Google. I would say that I am not a big fan of any big business, including Microsoft, Apple and Google. Notepad++ is my favorite editors for many computer languages including PHP and SQL. I prefer Eclipse over NetBeans for software development because Oracle (another “evil” in my opinion) controls NetBeans and I have concerns about NetBeans’ future. I use 7 Zip for compressing and uncompressing because I don’t want to pay for WinZip.
