My Term Research Project

In my final Term Research Project, I spoke about the advantages and disadvantages of open source software and how it made it better for peace, democracy, and the economy as being a new media technology. Open source programs give users flexibility, convenience, and affordability for services they need. It has helped democracy in delivering a better government at a faster pace using many open source programs such as Do-it-yourself Federal IT Bailout Report, Forge.mil, and Cooperative Research and Development Agreement. Open source has also provided cost efficiency for many people around the world such as low acquisition and maintenance costs, little or no licensing costs, and cost efficiency access from vendor look-in. It also gives the right to modify and upgrade software to suit peoples' needs and customization of software and release improvements for redistribution. All these advantages have made it better for peace as it made people integrate with eachother and work together to create data that can benefit many people in all parts of the world. Although open source software can be very helpful, there are also risks of intellectual property infringement, which can violate copyright, patent, and trademark rights. All in all, open source software has made a huge positive impact on today's society and has opened a world to new media that has never taken place years ago.