Serendipity35

When I talk to faculty about open source software (OSS), there always seems to be some confusion. Most people think it means free software (or services). Free does not equal OSS, but OSS is free. If you bought a digital camera and it came with "free" digital imaging software, that's not OSS. Do you have Adobe Reader and Flash Player software on your computer? Good - it's widely used and it's free. But don't start ripping the code apart (if you can find it) and redistributing it because it's not open source.

Open-source software is computer software whose source code is available under a license that permits users to study, change, and improve the software. It even allows you to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form. Most OSS is developed in a public, collaborative fashion.

You're probably already using some open source software. Common ones include Mozilla and Firefox browsers. This blog is on the OSS for blogs called Serendipity, and the code behind it is PHP (also OSS). You might be using Linux (a free Unix-like operating system) at your school without you even knowing it. Most users have no desire to modify the software they're using, but thank goodness some people are working on it. That's how OSS gets better.

OK, so we now know that Moodle is an OS learning management system, but Blackboard is "closed source" - no messing around with the code, and definitely no redistributing!

Here are some open source software products that you might want to try if you haven't already. Yes, they are free.

Wikipedia runs on Mediawiki OSS. You can create your own wiki with the software. Lots of info on that on our own NJIT Wiki35.

Moodle is a huge, worldwide learning management system. You can download Moodle, though getting it running on a server for your school is no small task. This is real IT work; it's not like downloading and installing iTunes on your computer.

Elgg is both an online social network for folks interested in education, EdTech and new approaches to teaching and learning, and it's the OSS that runs the Elgg.net site.

Less daunting OSS includes these easier to download/install/use products:

• VLC a good media player that plays many formats


• Audacity audio creation & editing editing - easy way to make mp3 files for podcasting (Mac & Windows) I use this all the time.


• Jahshaka video editing and effects


• Loudblog for audio blog creation and podcasting


• Inkscape a (vector) drawing tool


• Scribus desktop publishing


• OpenOffice.org a full office suite & NeoOffice which is a Mac version of OpenOffice.org


• Drupal a content management system


• Joomla another content management system


• WordPress is a very popular blogging platform


• GIMPShop the poor man's Photoshop for image editing


• There's even Stellarium - free astronomy software and server-based virus scanning OSS like Clam Antivirus

A few important places to learn more about the OSS movement are at the Creative Commons site and OpenSource.org and Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary is a good book by open-source evangelist Eric S. Raymond. He compares traditional software development to building a cathedral: "fully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of images working in splendid isolation" and says that OSS is "a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches."