I first heard of the phrase “open source” was in my first ever programming class at NYU. My professor had just briefly mentioned the phrase while talking about sharing code and ideas for software. Ever since then, whenever I thought of an open source project, I thought of freely sharing code/software.

After a week of taking the class Open Source Software development, my view of open source changed slightly. Now when I hear of the term open source, I think of a product software where the source code is shared/viewed under a specific license and copyright. Copyright of the source code belongs to the person writing the code or the corporation in which the code belongs to. The copywrite holder grants permission to other users to study or modify the code. This concept of freely viewing and modifying source codes for various projects allows developers to share new ideas and expands the reach of a specific product. Open source also helps new developers and students, like myself, get more involved contributing to projects while learning in the process.

There are a lot of advantages of open source software. For example, the most popular advantage would be that open source software is usually free. This allows users to study source code without paying for permission. Also, open source has no restrictions. Another advantage is that the public nature of the source code expands its reach. In other words, the public can provide contributions to the code, such as adding new features, and fixing bugs.

Although there are many advantages to open source software, there ways in which closed source may be better. Closed source projects only have one contributor, making it more user friendly from a technical support and security point of view. Also, closed source projects are created user focused, therefore easier to use. The major disadvantages of closed source are that it is heavily resitrcted and costly at times.

Before enrolling into Open Source Software development, I did not realize the differences between open source and closed source. I decieded to enroll into this class because I wanted to learn more about what exactly open source is. I have been hearing the term ever since I started my Computer Science journey, but never knew what it was.

Now, I know that I’ve always used open source projects, without realizing I was doing so. A open source project I have been regularly using for years is Wikipedia. I used Wikipedia many times for class research. I knew that anyone could contribute to a wiki page, however I did not know it was considered an open source project. I also regularly use Exclipse as an IDE. I also recently started experimenting with Atom as a text editor. Another exciting open source project I recently discovered is Bitcoin.