Week 11: Open Source Software

Open Source software is the wave of the future.  More and more programs are being created in open source formats and are beginning to compete with the titans of the software industry like Microsoft and Adobe. The move towards open source software is very convenient and beneficial for most people. Rather than having to pay hundreds of dollars for expensive name brand software, anyone with an internet connection can now use comparable tools for free. The other important benefit is that the software can be updated by multiple people and continually adjusted to fix bugs and improve it overall. Although major software companies are still the industry leaders, I think they will have to start lowering their prices if they want to continue to sell.

Open source software affects everyone. Even as a journalist, open source software can be used. Microsoft Word has been the industry norm for word processing, but even that is being shaken up. New open source programs are coming out that are even better. Photoshop was also the clear cut answer for photo editing software for years. Now Gimp, an open source equivalent is available for free. It is also constantly updated and changed so that it is getting better and better. In the past you had to pay hundreds of dollars to install a program like Photoshop. Now you can download an equivalent for free on any computer.

This image is a perfect example of why you have to be careful when using Photoshop.  As you can see here, the employees at Maxim needed a hand.