History proposal

History 271: essay proposal
I was reading my assigned reading and actually found it quite interesting, so I thought I would like to research it some more and write my thesis on open source software. The website "http://www.opensource.org/" defines open source as,"Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in."So basically software that is distributed on the internet for free that has an available source code. This means that the software can be altered and changed to suit a person’s need or to make it run smoother etc, on the condition that the redeveloped software is made available on the internet for other users.Linus Torvalds developed the operating system Linux and then shocked the computer world by making the source code available for download and encouraged internet users to download it and tweak and modify it to make it a smoother running user friendly operating system.In my essay I would like to look at open source software and how it is important in the future of computer software. I want to explore and research how having the source code open can allow better developed software and a more user friendly software/operating system. I will look at IBM and why it is supporting open source development as well as Microsoft/Mac and why they are opposed to the idea.Resources I have found include:-Geoff Mulgan, Tom Steinberg and Omar Salem’s Wide Open: Open Source Methods and Their Future Potential. 2005-Perspectives on free and open source software. Edited by Joseph feller-Free/open source software development. Edited by Stefan Kock.-www.sourceforge.net is a big contributor to the open source software world and i may contact them with some questions about why they think open source is important and why they are supporting its distribution.Further research into design and computer periodicals will be essential as that is where a lot of the recent open source information will be found as open source is a fairly new idea. I think a lot of my research will be done through periodicals and recent journals.