Thing #12 -- Open Source Applications

We are probably just at the beginning of a major shift to open source applications. The costs, expertise, and availability of programs and applications has really limited the use by the masses. Open source will create a community of creators across the board. Developers, end-users, and those who deploy all working to make an application accessible and highly usable is exciting. This de-centralization of creation will open up to many contributors working collaboratively to create a great application. Bottom line? Open source is the epitome of community -- the creators and the end-users.

Are we ready, in public schools, to really embrace open source applications? Probably not. We are moving closer, however. We are using Moodle, a great open source application, but to really make the jump to other programs is probably a ways down the road. Many of the applications are still in beta and still have a lot of bugs and problems to work out. Schools currently have licenses that are still viable and installed -- why would you throw all those out? Perhaps the school, as an end-use partner, is not really ready to take on the time and effort of debugging. Our tech people are just trying to make everything work seamlessly as it is, much less take on the task of debugging software and setting up work-arounds just to save the cost of a piece of software. Most of the smaller open source applications do not have a help desk or a customer service department -- so the task of fixing the glitches falls on the tech people and end-users. But...I do see that open source is the direction we are moving towards. Everyday, applications are refined, improved, and become mainstream applications in the public. Public awareness is probably one of the first hurdles to overcome.

To knock down the walls of proprietary and expensive software applications can only benefit everyone. The community of new users, and the talents and information they have to offer, will serve to be priceless in a world of user-created content. However, this does bring up another set of questions: with open code, is there more chance of vandalism or hacking the code? ...and what about attribution to other's work where it is necessary. I can see how those lines could be blurred or misused.

Closer to home -- how valuable is it that a student can download OpenOffice at home, at no cost, to do homework, create documents, and create presentations that can be shared with MS Office machines at school, at work, and with others? How valuable is Google Apps for students to not have to worry about portability, compatibility, and collaboration issues? That is how open source is valuable to us now. Productivity is not limited to those who can afford expensive applications and systems.