Page 227 - DCAP507_SYSTEM_SOFTWARE

Unit 14: Canonic Systems

solutions and contributing to technology. These students also do very interesting projects; Notes
for instance, a student whom I met recently was doing a project on a grid search engine.
Students can participate in the numerous open source projects that are around, or even
start their own project. In a traditional software development company, cost of development
is only 5-10 per cent of the total cost; the rest of the costs are in testing and marketing of the
software. In open source, a lot of the testing and marketing costs get reduced as that is
done by the community.

On the benefits to the academia
The benefits to educational institutions deploying open source is that their students and
teachers can copy the same software and deploy them to as many home computers that
they like. This is completely legal and we encourage people to do that. Students can also
share the software with their friends. That way, with open source, students learn about
sharing and caring for others.
Many projects done in a proprietary way never end up being actually used. Institutes
should, therefore, encourage students doing their project in open source. This ensures that
the code that they write is reusable by someone else. Even if the code is not perfect,
someone else can fix the code. This ensures that open source projects continue to be active.
Institutes can work with the industry to propose projects based on business needs.
With large enterprises now migrating to open source, this will open up lots of job
opportunities for students trained in open source. Education institutions should get their
students trained on open source so that they are ready to provide services to these
enterprises.
What factors do CTOs and CIOs consider before choosing an open source operating system?
Before choosing an open source operating system, the organisation needs to start getting
ready for adoption. The IT team will need to ensure that all of their software works with
the operating system they plan to deploy. Alternatively, if new software is required, staff
will need to be trained to familiarise them with new ways of working.
For example, if they want to use Linux and LibreOffice/OpenOffice they can first deploy
LibreOffice on their Windows installation so users can become familiar. They should also
ensure that any new applications being purchased or developed should be cross-platform.
This will ensure that they are able to migrate to another operating system easily.
While CIOs can reap substantial savings by deploying open source, they should also
budget for training and support. This ensures that there is professional support available
to help them and ensure they have a smooth deployment.

14.6 Summary

 When using autoconf, there are three system definitions (or machine definitions) that are
used to identify the "actors" in the build process; each definition relates to a similarly-
named variable.

 Advanced Query Syntax (AQS) is the default query syntax used by Windows Search to
query the index and to refine and narrow search parameters.
 AQS is employed by developers to build queries programmatically (and by users to
narrow their search parameters).

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