Skip to Content
A Beginner’s Guide to Open Source
on-demand course

A Beginner’s Guide to Open Source

with Karl Beecher
December 2018
Beginner
39m
English
Apress
Closed Captioning available in English

Overview

Learn everything you need to know about free and open source software (OSS) using this video introduction. You will understand the need for OSS, the motivation behind its emergence, and its philosophy, in particular the contrasting schools of thought in the OSS movement (i.e. free software vs. open source). You will then move on to more detailed, practical matters, beginning with software licensing, the importance of licenses, and the issues surrounding them.

The mechanics of writing open source software are described by demonstrating how it is done in typical, real-world projects. An overview of the OSS ecosystem shows you what tools, applications, and organizations are out there. Finally, you’ll see various testimonies from OSS users and developers explaining why they choose OSS and the benefits they derive from it.

What You Will Learn 
  • Begin navigating the OSS phenomenon 
  • See the basics of writing proprietary vs. open source software
  • Discover the motivations and principles behind OSS licensing, methods, and tools
  • Understand what requirements a program must meet to be considered OSS
  • Follow the typical development processes for open source projects 

Who This Video Is For

These videos are for anyone who wants to begin dipping their toe into open source and are looking for a simple, informative introduction. The video is suitable for programmers or non-programmers, such as non-technical managers and business owners.

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Watch now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Beginning Open Source Development on Linux

Beginning Open Source Development on Linux

William Bo Rothwell
Open source at AWS

Open source at AWS

Adrian Cockcroft

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781484243497