Doing a (school) project on open source software

[rob1101]

hello sorry for making yet again another open source school project thread, but i didn't want to bring topics back from the grave that are over a year old. so im going to make a new one.

To graduate high school we need to do what we call a senior project. Which is highly unnecessary :P anyway we need to write a 5 page paper with at least 5 sources and 3 different kinds (shouldn't be a problem though :p). Spend 15 hours on a product and present the project and product to 3 judges. Lame i know, but at least i was able to pick a topic im interested in. :)

first off let me say im not asking anyone to do my project for me. I just have not been in the open source community that long. meaning i have been using linux for less then a year. (love it by the way) So i would like to seek guidance from those more experienced members, and from those who have been around for awhile.

I have not had a lot of time to go through all these links thoroughly but this is what i have dug up so far. so this a work in progress (obviously)

http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...dows_and_Linux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Windows_and_Linux)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_an...ource_software (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software)
http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm
http://www.computeractive.co.uk/articles/print/2160505
http://en.jakilinux.org/gnu/10-reaso...indows-part-i/ (http://en.jakilinux.org/gnu/10-reasons-to-dump-windows-part-i/)
http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opens...book/appa.html (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/appa.html)
http://www.cs.yorku.ca/~cs251010/aboutLinux.pdf (http://www.cs.yorku.ca/%7Ecs251010/aboutLinux.pdf)
http://laptop.org/ (http://laptop.org/)

i also obtained a copy of the movie revolution OS

Important people to point out

Richard Stallman
Linus Torvald
Bill Gates (for comparison)

any other links or sources (especially movies or books) would be great.

thx in advance

[Joeb454]

what about http://www.sourceforge.net/ ?

It hosts a lot of Open Source projects...I'm not sure of the exact amount, though I'm sure it's on there somewhere

[mocoloco]

The official Ubuntu 7.10 training (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Training) (which by the way rocks) has a great first section on the history of the Free Software Movement, Open Source Movement, Linux, Debian, and of course Ubuntu.

[az]

The advantages to F/LOSS are both pragmatic and idealistic.

For the Idealist:

Software freedom:
http://softwarefreedomday.org/SoftwareFreedom

Transparent and sustainable technologies are vital to ensuring we can protect our freedoms. Think about e-Government systems such as electronic voting. When the systems running our voting is proprietary or closed, it means that we can’t be sure what the software actually does, so how can we trust the results? The issues with the Diebold [2] voting systems in the US is testament [3] to the need for transparent systems that are trustworthy. Think about other software you use everyday that is proprietary and apply the fact that you can’t be sure what it is actually doing! Does your email system send copies of your mail to a third party? Is your web browser, logging and automatically sending your browse history to someone? The most interesting case recently was when Sony purposely added spyware [4] to their music CDs that silently and automatically installed itself onto Microsoft Windows systems to search for piracy breaches. This behaviour has spawned a whole new wave of viruses and is a gross breach of privacy.

A must-read:
http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/maine-speech.html

The conversion to digital technology means that every work of utility or beauty, every computer program, every piece of music, every piece of visual or literary art, every piece of video, every useful piece of information--train schedule, university curriculum, map, chart--every piece of useful or beautiful information can be distributed to everybody at the same cost that it can be distributed to anybody. For the first time in human history, we face an economy in which the most important goods have zero marginal cost. And the transformation to digital methods of production and distribution therefore poses to the twenty-first century a fundamental moral problem. If I can provide to everyone all goods of intellectual value or beauty, for the same price that I can provide the first copy of those works to anyone, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone from anything? If you could feed everyone on earth at the cost of baking one loaf and pressing a button, what would be the moral case for charging more for bread than some people could afford to pay? This represents the difficulty at which we find ourselves straining at the opening of the twenty-first century.

For the pragmatist, I suggest you look up Linus Torvald's quotes (sorry, no link) and read The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Raymond.

But really, the pragmatic advantages and the idealistic advantages share a lot more than you would be led to believe. There is much bickering between those two camps. Take a look at the GPLv3 discussions.

http://tieguy.org/blog/2007/06/26/gpl-v3-the-qa-part-1-the-license/
A forum thread with a lot of opinions:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=497754&highlight=gplv3

[az]

Bill Gates (for comparison)



Bill Gates/Steve Ballmer/ Steve Jobs - they don't really compare with Linus Torvalds of RMS. Perhaps the equivalent body would be the investors who finance (and pull a profit from) Microsoft? *They* call the shots. When Microsoft does something odd, I can assure you that it's not at Ballmer or Gate's choice, but because they must do what the investors want.

[Darkhack]

Maybe talk about the growth of FOSS and mention mainstream products. Most people have heard of Firefox and it will make them say "Oh, that's open source? I love Firefox, I wonder if all this other free stuff is just as good". Google also runs on Linux and uses FOSS heavily.

Be sure to mention the four freedoms and maybe talk about systems besides just Linux, such as BSD. FOSS is an extremely broad topic. You could easily write thousands of pages on it. You might think about picking something more specific within that topic.

[macogw]

Books:

"Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity" by Lawrence Lessig (evils of DRM, DMCA, etc)
"Just For Fun" by Linus Torvalds
"Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" by Steven Levy (Stallman is called "the last true hacker", there's lots about how in the beginning information and code were freely shared, also a mention of Gates' "Open Letter to Hobbyists" and the outrage it brought)


Movie: Revolution OS

[az]

This is also a quick read:
http://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2007/fall/

[rob1101]

i would like to say thank you to everyone for all the input. this is helping me greatly

[20thCenturyBoy]

Everyone's provided great resources so I'll just share my input...

I would try to avoid "selling" open-source. Yeah, I love it, we all love it, but there are problems with it. I think once you develop a strong thesis this won't be a problem. I'm sure you've got it handled anyway. :)

[akiratheoni]

I'm doing a very similar project in school; I have to take and issue that has two distinct sides and explain both positions, then pick one. It also has to be a global issue. So free software is perfect; one of my main topics is going to be about the OLPC and how many European countries such as Russia are choosing Linux over Windows.

[tr333]

You should know about the differences between Open Source software and Free Software (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html). Also read up on the definition of Free Software (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html). The GNU website (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/) has more articles about free software.