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→My Views
==My Views==
Being in my fourth year at Seneca I have heard the word open source by a lot of different people, but no one has really gone into much detail about it. Taken this course this year has really showed me what open source is and what it has to offer because I really didn’t understand what it was all about until I took this course. I think it is a great thing that there is a community where you can go an ask questions at any point and receive prompt feedback. I also like that code is easily accessible, so there is a lot of stuff you can look at for help or even use in your own code. I also really like the fact that everyone is very friendly and eager to help. They also realize that people have a variety of experiences and are just happy to have more people helping with bugs. So far I have really enjoyed working on my bug and meeting many people on IRC. I think that this work is really enjoyable and when you are doing something you like it doesn’t even feel like you are working. I think this is really what open source is all about.
From these talks I felt that my feeling and views on open source was the same as the presenters. As I mentioned above everyone felt very welcoming and was eager to get everyone involved with their projects if they were interested. None of them bashed closed source projects, but they really showed some benefits that I didn’t even know about as to why working on open source projects is a lot better compared to closed source projects.
Now I also know from my experience with the bug I am currently working on it can also be a little tough sometimes to get answers from the community because everyone is very busy working on their own bugs. It can also be intimidating for new people as well because it is such a different environment to work in. Even having been in this class for almost 3 months, I still feel like there is so much more to learn.
Overall, I feel that open source is a great opportunity for anyone to get into just because it provides a great way to meet new people, become a better programmer and learn about new tools. From first hand experience there are many new tools that I have never heard of that people have told me to install when I am working with them on IRC. These are tools that we would never see in other classes and are very useful tools that should be more widely used.