This weeks lecture was pretty interesting and informative. I must admit I had no idea about free software licenses till today. I have and use mozilla fire fox but other than that I have no non proprietary software. However after today I am definetly going to scope some out, especially because I actually prefer fire fox to safari.
Now a little bit about the licenses around and what they mean. Creative commons makes licenses available that enable some rights reserved rather than all rights reserved. It was heavily influenced by the influx on free software available.
Free open source software in my opinion is great! It allows users to access source codes thereby allowing users to alter or improve the program. It also allows people to legally share this information with others. Its great that people can put their ideas and needs forward and make them reality by changing the way a program function to suit their needs. Its collaborative in a way that specifically targets what the consumers wants because the consumers contribute to create it.
According to the lecture the community are people who want to share information with the public in order to benefit others. Collaboration involves people working together to create better products.
Proprietary software is the software that the majority of us have and pay to use and doesn’t have much to do with collaboration of community. It is software that (in my personal experience) constantly malfunctions and requires you to talk to frustrating customer service representatives to fix the problem. In most cases it never seems to getting fixed. Unlike open source software you cannot access the code, nor can you legally alter or share the software. This lecture was a great eye opener in that it educated us on software that is available to us for free!
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