Open Source Software

For this week in class we talked about Open Source Software. Open Source Software is software that is available to anyone in the public for free. This allows users to use the software and modify it to change the function of it slightly to adapt it more to the needs of the specific user. I think that this topic that we discussed in class is especially interesting because I am also talking about this topic in another one of my classes. The class is Digital E-commerce so it is more about how people can use the free software to modify it and whether or not is is worth it for the creator of the software to make it available to the world for free. In this class we have discussed how open source software can be used in a collaborative way. People are able to create a software and share it with people to help make it better and take out any of its flaws that it could possibly have. Personally, because I am a finance major, I can see how big of an effect that open source software can have on the online economy and also how allowing people to see it and help improve it can increase the value of the software.