Until a couple of decades ago before the recent widespread usage of internet, accessing information and learning through the information had been quite an expensive process; from acquiring copies of textbooks, journals and handbooks to making massive payments enrolling for courses and trainings in various institution of learning. But this widespread adaption of the internet and the advent of open source communities have well changed that narrative.
Textbooks. (image from: FABIEN SANGLARD'S WEBSITE)
What really is the concept behind Open Source Community?
Open source communities are loosely organized, ad-hoc communities of contributors from all over the world who share an interest in meeting a common need, ranging from minor projects to huge developments, which they carry out using a high-performance collaborative development environment (CDE). These contributors can be anyone - usually a mix of professionals, learners, and hobbyists. To a large extent, the communities have birthed most of the open source software products available today.
Hence, open source software refers to the type of computer software in which source code is released under a license(by the copyright holder) granting users the right to use, study, change and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose without paying a dime.
By definition, source code is a list of text commands that is written by computer programmers, to be compiled or assembled into an executable computer program. One of the ideas behind Open Source software is that users can be co-developers or active contributors to projects' development, suggesting how to improve it and helping to find out bugs. When someone detects a bug, they report it to the software community and the community release a patch as soon as possible. In most cases, this release is faster than the Proprietary Software’s patches.
The paradigm shift
The main advantage of Open Source is that it is generally free and you do not have to pay for using it as accessing most of these contents is dependent on internet availability and free sign up. This saves a lot of money for big corporations and even for ordinary users. I mean why pay for AutoCAD when you can use QCAD to create blueprints for your building, computer chips and car parts? Why pay for Photoshop when you can use Gimp to edit and enhance your images? Why pay for Microsoft Office while you can use LibreOffice to write, calculate and do excellent presentations? Most licenses of the proprietary software systems are expensive and should be renewed every year. As we know it is really important for any big company to reduce the expenses as much as possible.
Be that as it may, it is also worthy of note that corporations do donate money(voluntarily, if they are happy with the used software) to the communities in order to be able to continue their work and develop new versions. Most open source applications have their own communities which are constantly evolving the software thus improving its quality and security... like I explained earlier, when a user finds a bug, the bug will be reported to the community and they will respond with fixes as soon as possible. This will birth new patch.
I am as well a product of open source communities. I started learning how to code using these free online platforms; W3schools and The Odin Project. Looking at, and studying other developers’ codes and algorithms improved my skills in coding, reusing codes that were written by someone else, and my experiences when reviewing others’ algorithms and logic. This has also made me to start contributing always in online communities, helping other budding developers and users to unblock them. I consider doing that as giving back to the community.
Furthermore, there are now various online learning platforms accessible with little or no cost. The popular ones being; Code Academy, iversity, FreeCodeCamp, Khan Academy, Linkedin Learning, Lynda, The Odin Project, W3schools.
Workstation.
The new challenge of learning
The information tracks go obsolete quickly. Versions & platforms evolve rapidly, even languages. The pace of technological changes demands that we learn how to learn new technologies as needed. And with all these free platforms, the challenges of learning is no longer finding and paying for information or learning, it's now more of filtering information.
Which content is relevant?
Which content is accurate?
What combo of contents represents the most efficient way for you to learn what you want to learn?
The real cost of learning is now in Time & Tools: And because there is no luxury of time, it's pertinent to think strategically on what to learn.