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Final Reflection

Over the course of the year, I feel that I have gained significant perspective into the world of open-source and how it can help the local and global community. 

Often in STEM fields, there can be too much time spent focusing on the technology being developed and that its the only thing that matters, but its just as important to study the impact of new technology.  Having class discussions with a varied group of individuals with many different ideas were helpful in understanding the different sides of the complex topics in the Software and FOSS communities.  

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Final Reflection

This course was a very valuable learning experience for me and preparing me for future work, not only providing me with more technical skills, but creating a mindfulness and thoughtspace where I’m more aware of the issues faced by the software development community and how developers can user their skills to provide for their community.  

Often times in STEM, there can be too much focus on just the technology and ‘progress’, but it is always important to think about who this technology is going to affect.  After each discussion we had during these two semesters, I always felt that my mind had been changed slightly or drastically about the topics we talked about, and helped me understand the more complex issues faced and the challenges associated with different approaches to solving them.  

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Blog Post for Code of Ethics

In my personal work experience, Ethics was a key part of developing the business and keeping good customers and employees.  Ethical codes lay the foundation for respect and integrity that ensures a fair experience for employees.  If employees feel that there is a good work culture, they will continue to work for the company because they know that they are treated fairly and feel that they are key to the success of the business.  For customers, a strong ethical foundation demonstrates the company’s commitment to providing quality service and will help retain customers.  

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Blog for Facial Recognition

Preparing for and leading the discussion on facial recognition was a very fun and engaging progress and I learned a great deal about the topic as well.  

Like all ethical and moral dilemmas, there are arguments for many different positions and each hold a significant amount of truth and should be thoroughly analyzed.

One of the main arguments for the use of facial recognition technology is its usage for security and identification, many people own phones that make use of this technology to unlock their phone or use it to verify financial transactions and it works extremely well.  In some cases, it has a 97%+ accuracy and is able to scan faces in regular light or infrared light, providing depth to facial features that are hard to recognize in low light conditions.  The technology is also unreliable in some senses, for people of color, especially women, it is very limited, ineffective, and inaccurate. 

My main concern with facial recognition technology is the ability to store the information and potentially have a database filled with identifiable information along with the face.  With how many CCTV cameras are in cities, it seems feasible that some bad actor would be able to track someones exact whereabouts and movements using the technology.  

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Blog for 1/28

Privacy as a right? The fourth amendment seems to be a negative right and privacy and the right to restrict information from the US government is a negative right as well. But in the digital age and the use of metadata and private search histories, ect it seems that privacy has become a positive right, and a person must opt-out of data sharing for custom ads. The use of VPNs to hide IP addresses and location data also demonstrates that privacy is positive right on the internet. Privacy is a limited right, it can be taken away for the good of society. Kantianism - consenting to the Nachi worm

The Nachi worm does not treat users and operating systems as rational individuals and each system is a stepping stone for its goal to remove the malicious worm and move to the next system. It does not matter if the Nachi worm is beneficial because it is automatic.

Utilitarianism - It provides a net benefit by removing the malicious worm and doesn't really have any downsides. Is the Josh-Matt scenario ethical according to Rule Utilitarianism ethics are determined by net benefits and its hard to analyze the net happiness and unhappiness if Josh gave Matt a good or bad grade.

If Josh gave Matt a good grade, it would make Matt happy but it could generate unhappiness among the other group members and the class where they feel that Matt did not do the appropriate work and still was able to pass the class and graduate.

If Josh gives Matt a bad grade it would cause Matt to be very unhappy, but I don't think that any of his classmates or group mates would feel happy about giving Matt a bad grade.

If Josh were to give Matt a good grade, it would break social contract theory because it was agreed upon that students who contribute

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Final Reflections

Over the past couple of days, now that my time as Dickinson student comes to a close, I’m asking myself: Why Dickinson, what am I really learning from my experiences on campus and in the classroom?  Liberal Arts colleges, specifically Dickinson, offer an unparalleled experience for young students.  By focusing on learning beyond the classroom, it becomes easier to see how ourselves as individuals impact our community and how can we leverage our situation to better the lives of people across the world.  

FOSS and HFOSS are manifestations of this mantra; how can a community of programmers come together and use our abilities and resources to make an impact.  FOSS is not only beneficial for those using the software, because free stuff is awesome, but it impacts those who contribute in a more significant way.  Even as a beginner on a project, it is easy to see how many different people from all over the world communicate and collaborate for others.  FOSS is a great introduction to post graduate professional work and it helps create a social foundation for working with all kinds of people.  

The work in the classroom has been extremely fun and engaging and I believe that only working with FOSS provides this kind of experience.  The communications skills required to be an effective classmate and group member while working as a small sub team scales directly to FOSS as a whole.  It is always important to treat everyone as an individual and make sure that progress is being made together.  

Another positive experience while working with FOSS is the process of learning about the community and the software involved.  It is important that one puts themself outside of their comfort zone, and FOSS is a great opportunity to engage with new people and technologies.  There is always something to learn in FOSS. 

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Discussion 12/6

Reading through the academic paper about legitimate peripheral participation helped me understand my role in a H/FOSS project. Learning how to contribute and communicate with classroom direction and independent direction is super important in growing as a software developer. I, along with many others, am affected by the phenomenon of Imposter Syndrome, where I feel like my abilities are far below those of other developers. Being able to contribute to projects and be valued as a developer is big motivation for contributing to a H/FOSS project. Business use for H/FOSS projects are great for continuing development. Not only does it help keep costs down for businesses using the software, it also allows for consistent development from that business. It is also very helpful for developers looking for jobs. They can use their experience on working on a specific project to land a job with a business that uses that specific software. Businesses are also able to open up their own software to help it grow. The idea of Widget frosting is discussed, providing community support for a project. When converting software its important to prepare for it. Maybe hiring a community manager and making sure that the core team of developers work well with an open community.

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Discussion 12/10

Redhat provides enterprise support for a complex package of open source software.  Every couple of months, Redhat will freeze a stable version of the code base and provide a subscription support service for the package.  This is successful enough to make 2.5 Billion per year for the company. Will this continue to be successful? Will another 'Redhat' happen?   Overtime Redhat will lose market share because of this model.  Because they don't sell the software, they can't use that as leverage on the market.  Overtime companies will continue to co-opt the code and develop enough of a knowledge base to support themselves.  The software will also become easier to use as it matures, reducing the need for professional support in the future. Its hard to predict what will happen in the future, but it has been demonstrated that a market player will take advantage of opportunity costs and provide support for future new technologies.  People will always pay for someone to do something that they can't do/don't have the time/resources to do it themselves.

Meritocracy is good and bad in FOSS and Tech - It certainly works better in FOSS because there can be a certain amount of anonymity and like we have discussed previously, the levels of contribution in a FOSS project are the basis for evaluating contributions.  E.g. higher level contributors are valued more than lower level contributors.  But not everyone starts off at the bottom rung of the ladder.

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Discussion October 25th

We discussed software architectures and how implementations of them are important to building software and deployment.  

Choosing architecture is extremely important when deploying and developing, if you choose a poor architecture for the project you are trying to build, you pretty much set yourself up to fail.  

During our discussion, state transition and process control were mentioned, but not discussed at length. According to https://www.guru99.com/state-transition-testing.html, state transition is :

 the software testing technique in which changes in input conditions cause's state changes in the Application under Test (AUT).

It is a black box testing technique in which the tester analyzes the behavior of an application under test for different input conditions in a sequence. In this technique, tester provides both positive and negative input test values and record the system behavior.

This paper by Carnegie Mellon https://resources.sei.cmu.edu/asset_files/TechnicalReport/1994_005_001_16316.pdf discusses process control and software architecture, and which architectures are better for process control systems

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Discussion 9/17

Communication is key when working with FOSS.  People from all over the world help contribute to the project and its important that everyone is on the same page.  

Different communication tools are better suited for different tasks. IRC is useful for asking a quick question about simple topics, while emails and forums are a better place to ask complicated questions and in depth discussions about the project among other things.  

Something I think is important to discuss is the IRC.  In many projects I researched, the IRC was the main form of communication about the project, but usually they are lacking many important features that an IRC should have.  In a couple of IRC, there was no chat log, or a way to view past chats before I joined the channel.  Not being able to view old chat is a major drawback of certain IRC channels. 

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H/FOSS Community Discussion

The discussion that really got me thinking was the one talking about why FOSS and HFOSS are successful, what makes them work so well.  The contributor pyramid discussed in Teaching FOSS, chapter 2 section 5 really resonated me me.  As I have gained more technical knowledge, I have been more able to contribute and learn about the various FOSS I use.  It is even the thing that started my interest for computer science.  

And another reason why FOSS is so successful and able to build a community of many different knowledge bases, is that it is free.  Because anyone can access and use the code, anyone can become a contributor at any level.  FOSS makes itself available not only to individual consumers, but to enterprises and business.

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Senior Seminar Blog Intro

This blog is being created for this course and will be used to post reflective writing on reading and discussion topics related to free and open source software (FOSS), software engineering and contemporary social and ethical issues in technology.

My plans after college are to...

First is to get a job.  I worked with Home Depot over the summer and found that it was a very positive experience.  I’m interested in continuing to work for them, but as a software engineer and I hope that the will be interested in hiring me.  I hope I can still live in the Philadelphia area after I graduate because I just love the city and it’s been my city for my whole life.  I wouldn’t be opposed to moving around the country for work, but I’d much prefer to be somewhere where I am familiar with the area or know people who live there.

School might be another option, but its not looking very likely.