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COMP 491/492

Dickinson College Computer Science Senior Seminar

Discussion or project status; Discussion of some open source success stories and and also criticisms of FOSS and FOSS culture.

What is the Secret of Red Hat’s Success? - Ruth Suehle from Red Hat, arguably the most successful open source business ever, responds to this question.
How open-source software took over the world - a discussion of the evolution of open-source business models.
The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS Community - a look at the ethics and diversity of the FOSS model by Ashe Dryden
Open Source Stories - watch one or two of these short films that tell the stories behind successful and inspiring open source projects.
Post questions from the above materials for class discussion to the Moodle forum. Please also feel free to comment on or respond to others’ questions as appropriate.

The Secrets of Successful Open Source Business Models - a comparison of four common open source business models.
Open Source-onomics: Examining some pseudo-economic arguments about Open Source - article by Ganesh Prasad that addresses a range of objections to the economic viability of open source.
Why Linux creator Linus Torvalds doesn’t really care about open source - Matt Asay writes about Linus Torvalds motivations for open sourcing Linux in the first place.)