The above phrase can also mean: “discovering truth by building on previous discoveries”.
Which brings us to the topic of today: Open Source Software
Recently the Effat library announced that they implemented a new system known as KOHA. And as you may have read, KOHA is an open source library system that provides smooth operation and powerful discovery and search tools.
But what does “open source” actually mean, you may wonder?
Open source, according to Wikipedia, encourages access through a free license to a product’s design or blueprint, and allows one to redistribute the design or blueprint including any improvements they added to it.
In the software development world, this means anyone can access the code of open source software, download it, run it on their computer, learn from it, and then contribute their own features to the software.
Open source pretty much runs the world of computers nowadays: everything from your laptop, to your smartphone to your TV is open sourced.
Companies such as Apple, Google and Red Hat, all provide access to their code, freely and without charge.
(Don’t believe me? Click here to get access to Apple’s open source code)
But what does this all mean? And how can you get involved with open source?
Just yesterday, Effat University held their first open source workshop.
This workshop introduced students to a website and tool that can be used to contribute to open source. The website is built on the open source tool called Git that allows software developers to work together on projects easily and fluidly. The website, called Github, is the most widely known platform for open source software. You can literally find anything and everything on there from operating systems that have been written by people all over the world, to simple web games that can be played on your browser.
And the best part? You have access to a pool of code, which you can download onto your computer, break apart and learn tons about how each application was built.