This week, we talked quite a bit about a very topical aspect of open source through the efforts of tracking and learning about COVID-19. I’ll be honest in the fact that I never quite expected the amount of unique projects that we were able to put together without a whole lot of overlap. There definitely seem to be trends in the overall types of projects that are out there (theres a whole bunch of datasets), but they all try and do their own special thing.

I think this exercise was, despite everything going on, a perfect way to tie everything back into the class and see a ton of “real world” applications of what we have been learning about so much in class. While all of our group projects are still definitely from the real world of open source, I guess being able to see such a fast and thorough coverage of coronavirus in the open source community shows us how useful and collaborative the open source model is!

As I’ve been having a bit of trouble getting down some code-based contributions for the class, this is a new area to see if I can help with something topical as well. While I’m not too sure if there are gonna be too many projects that I am qualified to contribute to due to lack of knowledge in the field, I will likely be still looking through to see if I can do anything.