JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, July 26, 2025

Tech­nol­o­gy Mat­ters

The evolving open source movement

by

20121004

It may not al­ways be ob­vi­ous, but the open source move­ment has been on a steady up­ward march. Glob­al­ly, open source ap­pli­ca­tions are be­com­ing a ma­jor fac­tor in all in­dus­tries from gov­ern­ments, health­care and ed­u­ca­tion to gam­ing and dis­as­ter re­lief. To­day, open source presents sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty for the de­vel­op­ment of lo­cal so­lu­tions, in­no­va­tion and in­dus­try.

Open source

The term open source gen­er­al­ly refers to any ma­te­r­i­al, such as soft­ware pro­grams or oth­er dig­i­tal con­tent that is made freely avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic for use or mod­i­fi­ca­tion from its orig­i­nal de­sign. For ex­am­ple, any­one can use, mod­i­fy or adapt the source code for the pop­u­lar An­droid op­er­at­ing sys­tem to cre­at­ing their own prod­ucts or ser­vices. The open source move­ment is based on a very dif­fer­ent philo­soph­i­cal ap­proach com­pared to tra­di­tion­al in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty cre­ation mod­els where copy­rights and patents pre­vent oth­ers from ap­pro­pri­at­ing ideas with­out cost or penal­ty. Open source li­cens­es specif­i­cal­ly grants roy­al­ty-free, per­pet­u­al and non-ex­clu­sive us­age rights to the gen­er­al pub­lic.

Knowl­edge: The prin­ci­pal thing

While the open source vs pro­pri­etary IP de­bate will con­tin­ue, there is no ques­tion that open source pro­vides tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty for or­gan­i­sa­tions as well as end-users. At the most ba­sic lev­el, open source pro­vides users the world over with sig­nif­i­cant build­ing blocks for con­struct­ing com­plex in­for­ma­tion struc­tures and ser­vices. The open source ben­e­fit is not sim­ply an is­sue of costs, but of knowl­edge. The ex­plic­it ex­plo­ration, mod­i­fi­ca­tion and adop­tion of open source soft­ware can have very re­al and tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits for de­vel­op­ing ca­pac­i­ty in the lo­cal tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor. The prin­ci­ples of open­ness and col­lab­o­ra­tion that lie at the heart of the open source move­ment are of ma­jor rel­e­vance with­in a de­vel­op­ing so­ci­ety con­text.

Open source soft­ware projects have, to an over­whelm­ing de­gree, been the re­sult of col­lab­o­ra­tive in­puts of thou­sands of con­trib­u­tors in­clud­ing, for ex­am­ple pro­gram­mers, de­sign­ers and writ­ers from across the plan­et. This ap­proach al­lows na­tions which may on­ly have a frac­tion of the re­sources of large de­vel­oped and emerg­ing economies to tap in­to a set of skills and ex­pe­ri­ences that go way be­yond their lo­cal con­text and lo­cal pock­ets. For in­stance, open source ap­pli­ca­tions such as Ubun­tu, Ushahi­di and OpenOf­fice can have been suc­cess­ful­ly used to ad­vanced pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the pub­lic sec­tor, in schools and even in the pri­vate sec­tor. The move­ment pro­vides a door­way for the de­vel­op­ment and cus­tomi­sa­tion of lo­cal so­lu­tions for lo­cal needs. Prop­er­ly lever­ages, open source ap­proach­es can be an im­por­tant dri­ver of in­no­va­tion.

Be­yond soft­ware: Open ed­u­ca­tion

Re­cent­ly, the open source move­ment has been evolv­ing from its soft­ware-fo­cused roots broad­er open da­ta and open con­tent ini­tia­tives. Al­ready, mas­sive­ly open on­line cours­es (MOOCs) are be­com­ing the most pop­u­lar form of on­line ed­u­ca­tion. The emerg­ing lead­ers of this move­ment, in­clud­ing Web sites such as Udac­i­ty and Cours­era, of­fer free cours­es in sub­jects such as com­put­er sci­ence and sta­tis­tics, taught by ac­cred­it­ed lec­tur­ers. An­oth­er a new par­a­digm is be­gin­ning to emerge: open text­books. This new de­vel­op­ment is threat­en­ing to dis­rupt a US$4.5 bil­lion in­dus­try that has so far avoid­ed the me­dia up­heavals ex­pe­ri­enced in mu­sic, movies and trade pub­li­ca­tions. Open-source text­books are free for stu­dents to use and for pro­fes­sors to mod­i­fy.

More com­pa­nies are mov­ing to de­vel­op­ment them, and more class­rooms are adopt­ing them. The un­der­ly­ing ob­jec­tive, po­lit­i­cal­ly and so­cial­ly, is to light­en the bur­den for stu­dents who have been hit with tu­ition in­creas­es and ris­ing text book costs. This move­ment aligns well with the rise in free on­line cours­es, and it is poised to rev­o­lu­tionise the way we view, and pay for, ed­u­ca­tion. Busi­ness­es, ed­u­ca­tors, gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions and in­no­va­tors should be look­ing at the open source move­ment with fresh eyes. Seen in the right con­text, with the right sup­port and in­cen­tives, the open source move­ment can of­fer a new world of pos­si­bil­i­ty for build­ing the knowl­edge econ­o­my.

Ten open source soft­ware projects you should know about

1. An­droid OS

An­droid is a Lin­ux-based op­er­at­ing sys­tem for mo­bile de­vices such as smart­phones and tablet com­put­ers. It is de­vel­oped by the Open Hand­set Al­liance, led by Google.

2. Gnu­Cash

Gnu­Cash is a free ac­count­ing soft­ware sys­tem de­signed for per­son­al and small busi­ness use. It al­lows you to track bank ac­counts, stocks, in­come and ex­pens­es, in ad­di­tion to dou­ble-en­try ac­count­ing.

3. Google Chrome

Google Chrome OS is a Lin­ux-based op­er­at­ing sys­tem de­signed by Google to work ex­clu­sive­ly with web ap­pli­ca­tions.

4. Ma­gen­to

Ma­gen­to Com­mu­ni­ty Edi­tion is the world's fastest grow­ing e-com­merce plat­form. The En­ter­prise Edi­tion, for which there is an as­so­ci­at­ed cost, of­fers fea­tures like mul­ti-store ca­pa­bil­i­ty, store cred­its and gift cards, out-of-the-box.

5. MySQL

MySQL is the world's most used open source re­la­tion­al data­base man­age­ment sys­tem that runs as a serv­er pro­vid­ing mul­ti-user ac­cess to a num­ber of data­bas­es.

6. Open Of­fice

A pro­duc­tiv­i­ty soft­ware suite for cre­at­ing text doc­u­ments, spread­sheets, pre­sen­ta­tions and data­bas­es.

7. PDFCre­ator

PDFCre­ator is a cred­i­ble ri­val to Adobe Ac­ro­bat let­ting you cre­ate PDFs from prac­ti­cal­ly any ap­pli­ca­tion.

8. Ubun­tu

Ubun­tu is a free op­er­at­ing sys­tem for Lin­ux that's quick and easy to use. Re­cent fig­ures sug­gest that around 50 per cent of Lin­ux users have Ubun­tu in­stalled. With its fo­cus on us­abil­i­ty, Ubun­tu comes with OpenOf­fice, Fire­fox Em­pa­thy, Pid­gin, GIMP and oth­er tools pre-in­stalled.

9. Udac­i­ty

Udac­i­ty, with a stat­ed goal of de­moc­ra­tis­ing ed­u­ca­tion, of­fers a range of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion op­tions that are rec­og­nized by ma­jor tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies.

10. Ushahi­di

An open source project which al­lows users to crowd­source cri­sis in­for­ma­tion to be sent via mo­bile de­vices.

Bevil Wood­ing is the Founder and Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, an ed­u­ca­tion-fo­cused not-for-prof­it de­liv­er­ing val­ues-based tech­nol­o­gy train­ing pro­grams in­clud­ing dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing and eBook cre­ation work­shops.

He is al­so Chief Knowl­edge Of­fi­cer of Con­gress WBN. Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing and Face­book: face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing­Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing and Face­book: face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored