Getting Involved in Open Source

Matthew Turland

Organizer, Acadiana Open Source Group

Before We Start

• Welcome! Glad you're here!
• Copies of this slide deck will be available on http://acadianaos.org - no need to take notes
• Sit back, relax, enjoy, and feel free to ask questions or make comments as the presentation continues

A Little About Me

• Organizer of the Acadiana Open Source Group since 2008
• Native of Louisiana (Carencro, Lafayette, and Duson)
• Graduated from ULL with a BS in computer science in 2006
• 10 years experience in the software development industry
• Senior Engineer at Synacor, Inc.
• Author of Web Scraping with PHP

What is Open Source?

Source means Source Code

• Source code is instructions that tell a computer how a program works

Closed Source

• Most software created by businesses is closed source, meaning that the source code is kept secret

Bugs

"Given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow." —Eric S. Raymond

• A bug is a defect in a computer program
• If a program is closed source and has a bug, only the business that sells that program can fix that bug

Open Source

• Open source software (OSS) is software for which the source code is made freely available to the general public
• This allows anyone with the necessary skills to fix bugs or add new features and submit them back to the project for inclusion

Common Examples of OSS

• Ubuntu, an alternative to Microsoft Windows
• Firefox and Chrome, alternatives to Microsoft Internet Explorer
• LibreOffice, an alternative to Microsoft Office
• Thunderbird, an alternative to Microsoft Outlook
• Pidgin, an IM client for AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk, and Facebook
• Android, an operating system for mobile devices

Well-Known Uses of OSS

• PHP, a programming language used by Facebook and Yahoo
• Apache, the web server software used to host over 59% of the web sites on the internet as of January 2011
• MediaWiki, the wiki software written in PHP that powers Wikipedia
• Blender, a 3-D content creation suite used for storyboard animatics and pre-visualizations for Spiderman 2

Local Uses of OSS

• ULL students use the open source Moodle learning management system
• The ULL Computer Science Department uses PHP and the MySQL database server in its undergraduate database course
• booksXYZ, a Lafayette-based online bookstore that donates proceeds to schools nation-wide
• Lafayette Traffic, an open source Android application based on an existing iPhone application for viewing local traffic information
• Firefly Digital, a Lafayette-based web design and development company
• surgiSYS, a Baton Rouge-based medical IT company specializing in surgical data management for accreditation and quality assurance

Why Open Source

• Free: great price point for individuals, small businesses, schools, libraries, non-profits, etc.
• Support: volunteers often provide free help, some vendors may offer paid support
• Participation: forums, mailing lists, and issue trackers provide direct means to communicate with developers about issues and suggestions
• Ownership: multiple ways to contribute to the quality of the software you use, even if you don't contribute source code
• Experience: young students and professionals can gain real world experience and work samples by contributing to open source projects

Open Source Applied to Content

• Scott Sigler, a fiction author who gives audio versions of his books away under the Creative Commons license, got a publishing deal based on listenership and later made the NYT Best-selling Fiction list
• Other authors with similar stories include Cory Doctorow and Mur Lafferty
• Musical duo Kurt Schneider and Sam Tsui built a large fanbase due to giving away musical covers, medleys, and mashups on YouTube

Open Source as a Community

• A largely contributing factor to the adoption and overall success of open source projects is the communities surrounding them
• Within these communities are social networks of contributors, which can lead to professional contacts or prospective employees/employers
• These communities can also serve to shine a spotlight on promising upcoming talent such as young Dmitri Gaskin, a contributor to the Drupal content management system

How Open Source Can Be Profitable

• Volunteer labor can reduce development costs
• For-profit development using open source software
• Hosting, installation, support
• Customization and add-on development
• Consulting and training
• Books and magazines

Ways to Contribute to OSS Projects

• Write code to fix bugs or add new features
• Promote the software to others, verbally and online
• Suggest new features
• Test release candidates and submit or add to bug reports
• Submit documentation improvements
• Participate in support channels, user groups, street teams, etc.
• Donate money to cover hardware or hosting costs
• Purchase and wear branded merchandise

Ways to Contribute to AOS

• First and foremost, attend our monthly meetings
• Help to spread the word about the group, meetings, and open source in the local community
• Give a short presentation (15-30 minutes) at a meeting on an open source-related topic
• Sponsor refreshments or door prizes
• Consider adopting open source in your own organization and hiring local professionals

That's All, Folks

• Questions? Comments? Concerns?
• Thanks for coming out! Hope to see you at the next meeting!
• Continued thanks go out to the LITE Center for hosting us
• E-mail: me@matthewturland.com
• Web site: http://matthewturland.com
• Twitter: @elazar
• More on the Acadiana Open Source Group at http://acadianaos.org