I attended the first day of the
Flourish! Conference. There were a couple speakers but the presentation that Ruth
Suehle was the most interesting and informative to me. Ruth Suehle works for
Red Hat, which is an “open source” company. Open sourcing is a philosophy that promotes
the free redistribution and access to an end product’s design and
implementation details. I kind of compare it to Napster or any other music
downloading source. Knowing this, I am a little skeptical of some of the things
talked about in the conference but I kept and open mind and learned a lot about
open sourcing during her presentation. She related open source to mimicry that
you see in art, design, stories, and a multitude of things that are derived
from previous work. She made the point that business can build off of open
sourcing for success, much like Red Hat had done. Many applications rely on
this share of information to operate and create new ideas. Some of these
applications were Linux, Firefox, WordPress, Raspberry Pi, and what we use in
class, the Arduino. She also talked about where open source is in all the
communities from education, to hospitals, to design. The part of her
conversation that I was most interested in was her talk about 3d printing. A
lot of ideas and advancements in 3d printing can be credited to open sourcing
but the coolest part was how she talked about where we are headed in the world.
She talked about how 3d printing has become so advance that they are using it
for bio-printing. Companies are manufacturing skeletal systems and arteries
that can be used for patients. Tools are becoming more inexpensive so users
like us are able to have access to these technologies which I think is awesome.
Flourish! Conference. There were a couple speakers but the presentation that Ruth
Suehle was the most interesting and informative to me. Ruth Suehle works for
Red Hat, which is an “open source” company. Open sourcing is a philosophy that promotes
the free redistribution and access to an end product’s design and
implementation details. I kind of compare it to Napster or any other music
downloading source. Knowing this, I am a little skeptical of some of the things
talked about in the conference but I kept and open mind and learned a lot about
open sourcing during her presentation. She related open source to mimicry that
you see in art, design, stories, and a multitude of things that are derived
from previous work. She made the point that business can build off of open
sourcing for success, much like Red Hat had done. Many applications rely on
this share of information to operate and create new ideas. Some of these
applications were Linux, Firefox, WordPress, Raspberry Pi, and what we use in
class, the Arduino. She also talked about where open source is in all the
communities from education, to hospitals, to design. The part of her
conversation that I was most interested in was her talk about 3d printing. A
lot of ideas and advancements in 3d printing can be credited to open sourcing
but the coolest part was how she talked about where we are headed in the world.
She talked about how 3d printing has become so advance that they are using it
for bio-printing. Companies are manufacturing skeletal systems and arteries
that can be used for patients. Tools are becoming more inexpensive so users
like us are able to have access to these technologies which I think is awesome.
While I
suggest learning about open sourcing and the free share of data, I believe it
is wise to remain skeptical. Ruth mentioned that it is more than possible to have
this be a profitable exploration of where things are going in our world. She
talked about how a band like Nine Inch Nails and many other artists and
companies will freely share their work and can still make a huge amount of
money. The problem I see with that is that they can afford to freely share much
of their stuff because they already have access to all the money they
previously made. A question that I didn’t get a chance to ask Ruth and I wish I
did was that, “It is easy to see the benefits of open sourcing, but how can a
student like myself, or someone who doesn’t have that access to millions of
dollars financially benefit from this?”
suggest learning about open sourcing and the free share of data, I believe it
is wise to remain skeptical. Ruth mentioned that it is more than possible to have
this be a profitable exploration of where things are going in our world. She
talked about how a band like Nine Inch Nails and many other artists and
companies will freely share their work and can still make a huge amount of
money. The problem I see with that is that they can afford to freely share much
of their stuff because they already have access to all the money they
previously made. A question that I didn’t get a chance to ask Ruth and I wish I
did was that, “It is easy to see the benefits of open sourcing, but how can a
student like myself, or someone who doesn’t have that access to millions of
dollars financially benefit from this?”