Week 5: The Movement Toward Free and Open Source Software

Week 5: February 8, 2010

This week was a bit of a challenge as I really had not ever heard of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Little did I know that had been using FOSS and did not even realize it. Dr. Bonk had an Adobe Connect interaction (optional) this week in which he assigned ‘roles’ for each of us to play. I was assigned Robert Stephenson, the author of one of our required articles this week: Open Source/Open Course Learning: Lessons for Educators from Free and Open Source Software.

Here is my scripted information I shared in the interaction online as Dr. Robert Stephenson:

I, Rob Stephenson, am an educator, eLearning architect and consultant living in San Francisco. I am currently Assoc. Prof. of Biological Sciences at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI, where he has taught an online physiology class for the last seven years. My previous faculty assignments include Purdue University and the Faculté des Sciences of the Université Mohammed V in Rabat, Morocco.

I am a pioneer of the "open course" movement: applying the principles of openness and collaborative development to the creation and use of interactive learning materials. He founded the first open course project, the Harvey Project (http://HarveyProject.org), an international collaboration to build free learning objects for physiology. He is the organizer of OpenCourse.Org, an NSF-funded platform to support open course projects.
I am a Curator of the Tech Virtual Museum Workshop at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA, USA.

Since Dec. 2008, the Program for the Future Global Design Challenge has been seeking new tools to improve collaboration and collective intelligence. It is a challenge to "develop a practical method, tool or technology that connects people so that they collectively act more intelligently. We are looking for new ideas – even simple ideas – that help people work better and smarter together in some important area." So far there have been 35 entries and the first year's Challenge is closing next Monday, Feb. 8, 2010”.

I hold an A.B. in physics from Princeton, an MS in physics and a Ph.D. in neurophysiology, both from MIT. Rob also holds Java programming certification from Sun Microsystems, and is co-leader of the Global Education & Learning Commmunity (GELC) at java.net, a foundry for open source Java applications.

In the article, Open Source / Open Course Learning: Lessons for Educators from Free and Open Source Software... I make the following observations:
• FOSS demonstrates that network effects occur at the edge of the network: in most cases bottom-up is more powerful than top-down.
• FOSS's lesson is that an active community of practice is the key to success. An open course collaboration is a knowledge ecosystem with an economy based primarily on exchange and reputation.
• When such a community involves all stakeholders, it not only provides the most value to its members but also grows the fastest.
• Including students in this community of practice strengthens their education.
• An open course community needs the ability to modify its resources since this is the only way they can be improved or adapted for new contexts.
• Community resources will evolve only if they include assessment as an integral component and the results of this assessment are used to drive improvement.
• Stakeholders need lots of simple, easy ways to make helpful contributions to the community so that it becomes a social norm. Ways to promote this include incentives, a reputation system, and a license that requires contribution. Technology is needed to make these contributions as frictionless as possible.

In Dr. Bonk’s book, The World is Open, chapter 4 is titled: It's a Free Software World After All.
This chapter is all about free and open software and the benefits they provide. "For one, there is innovation, creativity, and some sense of voice or control outside of commercial vendors" (p. 151). They also provide a learning and collaborative experience for those that wish to create these pieces of software - people working together towards a particular goal or common good. Free and open source software is key in the WE-ALL-LEARN model, providing a growing capital for education.

As I look at open source learning sites such as Merlot, Moodle, and Wikibooks, it makes me wonder about the 'rules' for using open source in comparison to the 'rules' for commercially available software products. A peer in my course, Mag, noted an issue with open source learning in the following entry: “Academic Earth's Terms of Use include a major section entitled DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES, LIMITATION OF LIABILITY AND INDEMNITY: WHILE WE DO OUR BEST TO ENSURE THE OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE OF THE AE SERVICES, YOU AGREE THAT USE OF THE AE SERVICES IS AT YOUR OWN RISK.....etc, etc. (Sorry for the capital letters, but it is written in caps on their site.) They also have a section titled: NOTICE AND PROCEDURE FOR CLAIMS OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. Seems to be lot of red tape for an "open source' organization who's mission is "giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education."”

Another peer in class, Leesa, identified another issue concerning hidden costs in "free" such as costs of set-up, training, maintenance, upgrading, the patches and the system integration and so on. Dr. Bonk stated: ‘Humm...perhaps it is not free after all’.

Several interesting and helpful websites I learned about:

The 8 Most Successful Open Source Products Ever (http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/05/29/the-8-most-successful-open-source-products-ever/ ) suggested by Michael K. in my class.

http://edubuntu.org/ another FOSS that I had not heard of before

http://OpenOffice.org a totally free version of Office I also really like the website

www.alternativeto.net alternatives to common programs like office, adobe and users can vote on the ones they like the best. Very cool site (suggested by Justin in my class)

http://breeze.mc.maricopa.edu/p65735599/ great site for health, medicine and sciences

Very much a week of learning for me,
deb