Open Source Software – The Developers View / The User’s View [B7]

Abstract

The overwhelming victory for the open source lobby in the debate at last year’s Institutional Web Management workshop confirms the popularity of open source software in the Web community. But the availability of open source products is not in itself a guarantee of quality software. What are the risks and issues for both the developers and users of such products? How many people actually want open source as opposed to “free” binaries – albeit with a community of developers backing it up?
In this session Mark Stiles will provide a forum to discuss these issues. The session is suitable both for open source developers and for those who may have an interest in using open source software. (Mark would like to stress that he hasn’t been a “programmer” for a very long time and claims no expertise in the technical aspects of Open Sourcing!)