This week was a busy week in class; we covered how to evaluate a project and had a guest speaker from Bloomberg. While discussing project evaluations, I thought it was interesting the different aspects that one should check to assess the health of a project. I think it’s important to start at open source project’s website before going to their repository. Many of the websites for the projects we looked at had links to other useful information, such as the link for the how to contribute and link to the Github repository. One of the most important things I learned was that if a project does not have a Code of Conduct, we should be weary. It was a rule that I would probably not have realized on my own. When it was mentioned in class, it made me realize that not having a Code of Conduct could suggest that the open source project community may not be as friendly.

We were also be able to see the use of open source projects at large corporations, such as Bloomberg. Before the talk, I did not realize that large companies would be interested in using open source projects. It was interesting to see how for-profit companies are interested in participating and being a part of the open source community. Mr. Fleming also spoke about the Bloomberg Terminal and the impact it has on its users. I thought it was very interesting that the Bloomberg Terminal had an aspect of instant messaging long before social media and email were popular. Mr. Fleming mentioned that it was important to make a product “sticky,” a concept that is especially true today in the tech industry.

Lastly, I have made a few contributions to Open Street Maps. So far most of the contributions I have made are adding restaurants around Washington Square Park. I found the community on Open Street Map to be friendly and helpful. One of the contributions I made was placed on the wrong address, and one of the members in the community pointed it out to me. I think the fact that people are collaborating on Open Street Maps is really cool. Also, I think its great that people are checking each other’s contributions to make sure that the map is as accurate as possible.