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How To Promote Open Source

Posted on 12:03 In:
The long-term method for promoting Open Source Solutions is to do our homework and find those direct connections where Open Source absolutely and “no doubt about it” improves teaching and learning. Then, we just measure the improvements, record and report the data, and let the results speak for themselves.
The short-term method is to not bother to promote Open Source Solutions because few school district stakeholders care whether the product is Open Source, anyway; but to create “must have” content that teacher and students absolutely demand once they find it. (On the Internet, “Content is King.”) But, we create this content with Open Source tools, and build some advantage into the product that require that Open Source products be used to take full advantage of the contents’ values and benefits.
This strategy would be successful, except there are three difficulties.
  1. The first difficulty is that whoever produced this content would recognize that the content was too valuable to give away for free
  2. The second problem is that STAR Office, although superior to its little brother, Open Office can’t do all the things that the “high-priced spread,” i.e., Microsoft Office can do. Teachers that already have a huge investment in time and research in their own materials and presentations would squawk that the Open Source product didn’t serve their needs
  3. The third reality is that anyone that builds this extensive content would have to use the long-term method to test each and every component to determine what students benefit from the materials, under what instructional methods the materials are successful, what instructional risks are associated with the use of the materials, and which types of teachers and students are successful with the materials (and which types of teachers and students are unsuccessful with them)

Open Source History

Posted on 11:51 In:
I'd like to tell you a story about what everyone calls "open source" software. There's a lot of heros, a wild-eyed visionary (who might be a madman), but no villians. At least not yet.
It's a pretty long story, and I'm only telling you a few of the parts I know.
This story started almost twenty years ago, and it isn't over yet.

Richard Stallman


In the early 80's, a programmer named Richard Stallman worked for MIT. He spent huge amounts of time working on the original Emacs, an operating system called ITS, and the exceedingly coolLISP machines.
Stallman wrote good software. His programs were clever--they were frequently built around a few good ideas that made everything else easy.
But Stallman was also an ideologue. His software came with instructions: Share this code with your fellow users. Learn from it. Improve upon it. And when you're done, please give something back to the community.
To Stallman, this sharing was a moral principle. And as it turned out, Stallman would happily turn down money, fame and glory in the name of his moral principles.


The GNU Manifesto


In 1984, Stallman was wrestling with the software equivalent of Napster. Like the Grateful Dead, he was an artist who wanted users to share his work. He asked them to send him some money if they could--so he could write more--but he never required them to pay a cent. He didn't want to discourage sharing.
But Stallman had a larger problem: Even if users could share the software that he wrote, they wouldn't be able share anybody else's. This bothered him.

He could have gone down the Napster route, and encouraged software piracy. Or he could have given up, and only shared a few small tools.

Instead, Stallman decided to write an entire operating system, a complete set of development tools, and all the applications that anybody would ever need. He planned to give all these tools away, so that his users would have something to share.


Linus Torvalds


By 1991, the GNU Project had either written or located most of the parts of a complete Unix system. But they were having problems with the kernel.
Stallman (and other volunteers) were working on a kernel called the HURD. Unfortunately, the HURD was a bit too clever, and the team had gotten in over their heads. They certainly weren't in any danger of shipping.
Meanwhile, young Linus Torvalds was hacking on a tiny kernel, just a toy. He announced it on comp.os.minix:

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.
To compile Linux, you needed GCC. To run any programs, you needed the GNU C library. And half of the programs available for Linux were originally written by GNU volunteers.
Linus never made any secret of his debt to the GNU project. He even decided to use their (rather complicated) software license as a way of saying thank you.


The Linux Explosion


But despite Linus's debt to the GNU project, he made a much better leader than Stallman. Linus was a software guy, pure and simple. He never spent much time writing polemics or arguing philosphy. And he never planned very far ahead. He just did his thing, and argued for his beliefs by example.
(Back when Linux had perhaps a hundred thousand users, Linus made an offhand quip about "world domination". Now that Linux is a household name, he no longer make jokes like that.)
Linus could convince people, many of whom were frightened by Stallman. And Linux grew from "just a hobby" to the third most popular operating system in the world.


Netscape and Open Source


Eric Raymond was an old friend of Stallman's. He had written some pretty good software in his day, and helped edit the Jargon File, a compedium of folklore about ITS, Unix and the Internet.
He wrote a paper called The Cathedral and The Bazaar. (The Cathedral, in this paper, doesn't actually represent proprietary software. If anything, it represents the HURD and Stallman's insular development methodologies.)
Netscape took a liking to Eric's writings, and decided to turn their browser into a bazaar.
Eric was very much into spin control, as it turned out, and wanted to repackage Stallman's radical ideas into a less intimidating form. He convened some friends, put the kibosh of the word "free" (which was politically unacceptable), and helped coin the term "open source".
At the time, people like Larry Wall, Brian Behlendorf and Guido van Rossum weren't talking to each other, or to the Linux developers. They'd built their own communities, but there was no real unification.
Tim O'Reilly sold a lot of books about Perl, Python, Apache, and various other "open source" software. The O'Reilly books were of extraordinarily high quality, but they were proprietary. (Stallman had already pointed this out to anybody who would listen.)
So people like Tim and Eric worked on the PR, and started pulling these various groups together. And for the most part, their efforts did accomplish something. Today, everyone's heard of open source, and people like Guido and Linus actually talk to each other.

About Us

Posted on 12:24 In:
Assalamualaikum W.B.T to all viewer. Thanks for supporting us at this blog. I just uploaded my first blog . Its basicly an introduction about Open Source.I decided to make a blog so i could tell you about  that basicly about Open Source Operating System, please let me know via comments or email :) .

Our Group Member :-


Names Given is Muhamad Firdaus Bin Abdul Wahap. I am from Perak. And i was born on 16 November. That's all about me. TQ (^^,)v



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Names Given is Irwan Bin Ozid. I am from Perlis. And i was born on 13 Julai. That's all about me.




Free Software

Posted on 12:00 In:

“Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.”
Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program's users have the four essential freedoms:
  • The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
  • The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
  • The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
  • The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission to do so.
You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.
The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job and purpose, without being required to communicate about it with the developer or any other specific entity. In this freedom, it is the user's purpose that matters, not the developer's purpose; you as a user are free to run the program for your purposes, and if you distribute it to someone else, she is then free to run it for her purposes, but you are not entitled to impose your purposes on her.
The freedom to redistribute copies must include binary or executable forms of the program, as well as source code, for both modified and unmodified versions. (Distributing programs in runnable form is necessary for conveniently installable free operating systems.) It is OK if there is no way to produce a binary or executable form for a certain program (since some languages don't support that feature), but you must have the freedom to redistribute such forms should you find or develop a way to make them.
In order for freedoms 1 and 3 (the freedom to make changes and the freedom to publish improved versions) to be meaningful, you must have access to the source code of the program. Therefore, accessibility of source code is a necessary condition for free software. Obfuscated “source code” is not real source code and does not count as source code.

Financial savings

In the majority of cases of Open Source software, the software will be available for free. In other words, the acquisition costs are considerably lower than those of the traditional, proprietary software that may be purchased.
In many cases people also want the services connected with the software acquisition that will cost; installation, operation, training support, however compared with proprietary software the same case often applies here.

Software code that sustains a critical eye!

The people who originally write the software always know that anyone can see in full detail how it works or what solutions have been chosen. They will therefore naturally do as good a job as possible in order that they can be as proud as possible of the product and avoid criticism as much as possible.
It is perhaps simplest to conceal the source code and thereby obtain a little more freedom as long as the end product is ok. However by producing in accordance with the ”Open Source code” concept, one makes a clear statement that ”my method withstands the light of day and a critical eye!”

Easy integration and interaction

Open Source code means that it is relatively simple to adapt programs so that they can work with each other because you can see from the source codes how a program ”thinks” and how you should approach it to share or exchange data, for example.

Rapid debugging, rapid further development

Because the source code is open, the developer/producer does not just receive feedback on any errors or problems, or proposals for new functions, but feedback reports that can specify down to the code level what should be done – it is therefore far simpler for the producer to implement changes on the basis of feedback reports since these often say precisely what program changes must be made and also any errors in the original source code may be corrected by the person who detects the error without having to wait for the original programmer.

What is Open Source

Posted on 11:06 In:
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology. Before the term open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; open source gained hold with the rise of the Internet, and the attendant need for massive retooling of the computing source code. Opening the source code enabled a self-enhancing diversity of production models, communication paths, and interactive communities.Subsequently, the new phrase "open-source software" was born to describe the environment that the new copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues created.

The open source model includes the concept of concurrent yet different agendas and differing approaches in production, in contrast with more centralized models of development such as those typically used in commercial software companies. A main principle and practice of open source software development is peer production by bartering and collaboration, with the end-product, source-material, "blueprints," and documentation available at no cost to the public. This is increasingly being applied in other fields of endeavor, such as biotechnology.

    what is the linux features?
-No Constant Rebooting
    #The only time a system requires a reboot is when there is a major hardware upgrade (or failure) or kernel upgrade. If these don’t occur, it’s common for the system to be up for years.
-Portable Software
    # Use the software as they wish, for whatever they wish, on as many computers as they wish, in any technically appropriate situation.
    # Have the software at their disposal to fit it to their needs. Of course, this includes improving it, fixing its bugs, augmenting its functionality, and studying its operation.
    # Redistribute the software to other users, who could themselves use it according to their own needs. This redistribution can be done for free, or at a charge, not fixed beforehand
-No Settings hidden in code or Registries.
    # Linux and many Linux applications are distributed in source form. This makes it possible for you and others to modify or improve them. You're not free to do this with most operating systems, which are distributed in binary form. For example, you can't make changes to Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Word - only Microsoft can do that.
-Mature Desktop (X Window System)
    # The X Window System is a Graphical User Interface (GUI) developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In some ways one can compare the X Window System with early versions of Microsoft Windows. Just as Microsoft Windows was an application that ran on top of MS-DOS, X Window is a graphical environment that runs on Unix and Unix-like operating systems. The X Window system, however, is simply a program that draws graphics to the display environments take care of the look and feel of the desktop, aid provide a wide range of configuration options and functionality.
-Freedom
    #  Nobody should be restricted by the software they use. There are four freedoms that every user should have:
    # the freedom to use the software for any purpose, 
    # the freedom to change the software to suit your needs, 
    # the freedom to share the software with your friends and neighbors, and 
    # the freedom to share the changes you make. 
    When a program offers users all of these freedoms, we call it free software (free not refer to price but
    freedom)



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