Week 6 - Free and Open Source Software

Free and open-source software has changed the software industry in ways that I don't think we can truly realize yet. The amount of skilled "hackers" out there who are continually working individually and together to create high-quality programs is truly amazing. On a side note, I found it very interesting to see the term hacker used in a positive way, when we are so used to seeing it used by the mainstream media in a negative way. I agree that free and open source software can be an excellent resource; but I think that many large corporations will be hesitant to use it; and traditional software will still be dominant in the near future. Also, as many of the articles this week pointed out, "free" can be a very deceiving term when used to describe open source software, because it doesn't accurately reflect the time that goes into developing and maintaining it; which has to be accounted for somewhere. An essential characteristic for open source software to be successful is the community that goes along with it that continually updates it.