Open source refers to a philosophy and practice characterized by making the code available (in the context of software), but the term is also used more broadly to refer to similar free culture principles in other fields.
Objectives
Design of learning resource will support learners for the following objectives:
- be able to access the application of open source software and identify requirements and constraints of applications,
- assist learner in installation, maintenance and usage of open source software on different levels:
- Open Source Operating Systems
- Open Source Software
- Open Source on Open Hardware
- learn about challenges and workflows to migrate towards an Open Source infrastructure of multiple IT devices.
- Calculate total cost of ownership
For more info, see open source (Wikipedia).
Learning Task
- (Digital Divide) Explore the benefits and challenges for Open Source Software, the maintenance, ... and analyze the relevance for working against the Digital Divide.
- (Sustainable Development Goals) Explain the relevance for Sustainable Development Goals - check the different goals for application of Open Source software and identify possible Open Source software for the specific goal.
- (Low-Cost Technology) Explore the concept of low-cost technology to reach a maximum number of people.
- (Open Community Approach) The Open Community Approach is a generalisation of the Open Source principle. Explain the differences and join ideas that are shared between Open Source and the Open Community Approach!
See also
Idea
Open source software development has begun a revolution. The three major characteristics are:
- open source revision control/repository systems such as Git,
- pair programming that starts with modifying examples,
- Test driven development (TDD) which involves Unit Testing documented by DICE.
A majority of engineering projects involve software. Typically the next team finds it easier to start over rather than re-use software. This has to change. The above tools are designed to emphasize software documentation and creation that is rapidly evolving in the open software community.
The goal of this project is to develop introductory tutorials in each of the above topics, figure out how to integrate this within a general engineering introduction course, and how this is linked to wikiversity documentation.
Version Control Systems
A community of developers create bug fixes, improve the software and create new releases in a team. Explain the role of Version Control for the Open Source community.