Open Source and Me

Glance back to open-source idea

This morning, I was thinking about who is started the open source software idea and googling it. And then I clicked a link that title named 'Brief history of open source' and i want to add my thoughts on these history. The concept creator of free software is Richard M.Stallman,a programmer at MIT's artificial intelligence lab. He grew up with computer   in 1960s and 1970s.In this time, the computer users have the ability and right to modify or write the software on his or her computer (mainframe computers) and freely share to others. As computer cheaper and more numerous in late 1970s, producers and companies should act a copyrightable and form of intellectual as music CDs, book's text and films. When these things happen, Richard M.Stallman concern with computer users' ability to be good neighbors and members of what he thought was an ethical and efficient computer-user community. He named this vision-community that developed liberated code:"free software". He defined it into freedom 0 to 3.I just rephrasing this history into more brief. Every real things start from sparkling thoughts of ours' mind. Just need to feel that! Why we didn't know the value of open source movement? The following lines might be explain why.

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 Why we are not open-source fans?

In my country, we (students, learners and every one who knows about IT, including me) haven't known too much about open-source movement.

(I means we know what this term mean but we don't understand it.)So, Why? we don't feel and know the meaning and value of Open source. We got every resource we need almost cost free. What ya want? OS? Applications? Gaming software? you can buy every kind of these resources around 1$.Every computer runs unregistered Microsoft Windows XXX version. No one use Mac OS because we can't afford apple branded-PC and every software need to paid. Want a computer, go to the sale center and buy a cloned PC. Pay some installation cost, the sale center add on free Windows and other popular software (95% of them are for Microsoft OS). Whatever, Cool!! If ya require more software than they installed, don't worry. Every kinds of software can get with lower costs. Aha! Don't need to think about license aggrement,serial numbers and every protected stuffs. Sometimes, I burn another copy for my friend. We all are god-damn pirates. In this situation, thinking about open-source software is a little geeky and most of us haven't considered about it. I know it's not the absolute point we don't know open-source initiative. Many other points also exist like the weakness of our education system and lack of strong technical inspiration and inadequate access problems.

 Free (beer) or Free(speech)

First time, I heard these words:"free software", "open-source"...I thought that"..Can’t too good. It's free things. May be like free (beer)". After dig up and contribute about open-source, I haven't known that "It ain't free beer. It's free like the word in "free speech". May be it's funny!!but it's real. The advantages of open source is simple, I thought: You own the code, It's free and you are free (free to change the code, free to add new features, free to have anyone come in and do these things for you. )

On the other view, drawbacks are existed. No guarantee it's stable or not. To run up everything properly for an (professional) end-user, it needs time and skills to develop, modify and use. There are many "Hows" to know. The number and variety of application programs are not yet as large as those available for the Microsoft Windows operating systems. Recently, I install Ubuntu 8.10 along with MS XP and facing many problems to solve. Every times, I run to internet café' and googling the solutions .Whatever it bored me, it feels like living in a new home. Every things is new and odds. I'm a open source newbie (also in blogging) and Just drop some lines what I think. May be I'm right or may be not. So, some things you want to make a point, comment me. I'll really appreciate it.

I wrote this post with Open Office.org.