How to adopt and use open source tools Fresno 2018
Why we’re in this session:
Here to learn about which open source tools people are using CiviCRM as CRM choice Exploring possibilities for collaborations, experiences for using open source
What are the benefits of community-developed, open-source tools?
Open source: involves 100s of community developers from diverse populations and locations.
Not open-source: issues with bugs, security issues, falls on corporate owner of software to fix these issues, they can charge for additional upgrades/fixes, takes a longer time for fixes, lack of control.
Open source use-cases and benefits: the monetary cost is lower, can use in-house dev combined with open-source community to dev customized platform, save costs, own control of your tools.
Don’t even need to know how to code to contribute. You can also create documentation about features, functionalities, available features that may not be known by others who are doing similar work.
What are our backgrounds?
Public health, nonprofit programs, admin, students, Also, let’s share info about starting our own businesses.
GIT. What is GIT? Version control system, keep track of your project development in big teams) Coding: what skill level do we need to use open-source software?
Discussion: Tools for IT Work
Open source software we have used:
- Open Office, Windows-based office suite
- GIMP: free open-source Illustrator, photo editing, etc.
- Mozilla Firefox
- Wordpress
- Libraries: bunch of code that is already written for you that allows you to use functions that allow you to not have to re-invent the wheel. There are benefits and drawbacks. Sometimes you can find a lot of old code that hasn’t been updated in a long time. Why would it not have been updated? Is it trustworthy? Has it been replaced by better code, and subsequently abandoned?
What kind of issues can arise if the code is bad? What risks are inherent?
- Coding in “security safety: should be mindset. Crowd source opinions and recommendations from open source community about specific code. Usually get a good response, can often be very reliable.
- Multiple people working on code: Version control is positive benefit in open source.
- GIT: Main work in a live project is called Master. If working on code, you do your work on a copy of the master, called a branch. Working in environment away from master code enables you to code and text without altering master. Then peer reviews of your branch follow, and when vetted, code is merged back into master.
- GIT: Single person use vs. working with teams. Problems where people working on branches, on multiple features, when pulled from GIT, do it as often as possible, so that any conflicts are immediately resolved from other people. Merging can cause conflicts.
- GIT: Technically can be used collaboratively with documentation development for multi-person teams.
- Recommend to use password protection apps for generating complex passwords and archiving passwords. GPG, open source, public key and private keys.
- Recommended software for password generation/protection
- Bitwarden
- OnePassword
- LastPass
- KeePass
- TIP: Library card in county library system may give you free access to linda.com coursework.
- Encryption text messages through SIGNAL, TOR. Signal is open source, allows you send fully encrypted texts. TOR, let’s learn more about TOR in additional session!
- Open source community exists to combat propriety software dev that can control the way you dev your tool sets to do your work.
- What Group-chats do we use? IRC. Internet Relay Chat. WhatsApp currently uses Signal encryption, but bought by facebook. Changes will be radical to encryption in FB updates- heads up!
Our take-away:
Open source is under our control and is maintained by a diverse community who are often committed to keeping digital platforms open to wide population not controlled by for-profit entities. People all over the world invest into developing better systems, software, and we all benefit as a society from having access to open-source software.