The keyword for me when it comes to “open source” is definitely “open” because it encompasses everything that makes open source software such an appealing idea to so many people, me included. It’s the opposite of a walled garden, allowing anyone and everyone to come in and contribute or use however they want. While this borderless nature can open the door for bad actors to wreak havoc, it is also integral to one of open source’s greatest strengths, it’s ability to foster collaboration. With the support of a strong community of contributors and users, open source software has the potential for near infinite iteration and improvement due to it being easily accesible and shareable. A passionate and collaboritve community can take open source software to the ends of the earth in a way that closed source projects would find hard to replicate. On the other hand, the life of an open source project fizzles out with the last fires of its community. I’m taking a class on open source software development to strengthen my knowledge on the ways of open source, so as to help me join these communities and contribute to open source projects in my own way.

Open Source Projects That I’ve Used

One of my favorite projects is the Dolphin emulator, as it allows me easy access to my cherished library of increasingly retro GameCube and Wii games at a high quality due to graphical mods. Dolphin’s various configuration settings let me customize the experience for seamless playback and emulation of my favorite games. Going into more practical projects, Atom is an aesthetically appealing text editor that has good integration with Git and GitHub for someone like me who likes to be lazy more than occasionally, and LibreOffice is a god-send because it does pretty much the same thing as Microsoft Office but for free. Finally, the most interesting project I’ve interfaced with was around 4 to 5 years ago with Paranoid Android, an operating system based on the Android Open Source Project. I used this operating system as my first foray into flashing custom ROMs onto my old Nexus 6P phone, and I remember this period of experimentation and tinkering with my phone as quite an exciting time for me.