Open Source Software Usage in Education and Research: Network Traffic Analysis as an Example

Tendency to Use Open Source Software in Higher Education

By definition, open source software (OSS) is software that is available to everyone, including the source code, along with the copyright license that permits using, studying, modifying, or redistributing the software (Beal, 2008). OSS covers a wide range of user needs, ranging from simple programs such as editing utilities, to very advanced software such as operating systems. The most famous successes in OSS are the operating systems Linux and Android.

Using OSS in education is a current tendency in some of the leading universities around the world, including the USA and Europe (Wilson, 2013; Roach, 2016). Some of these universities, such as MIT and Stanford, effectively participate in developing open source projects through their dedicated research labs. The main reasons for choosing OSS in many educational institutions are the cost, which plays a key role especially in limited-budget educational systems; its high effectiveness and success with some important educational platform systems such as Moodle (Cole & Foster, 2008); and better suitability than closed software for research environments in higher education. Nowadays, there is a tendency in some countries to share information and make education available to everyone (e.g., the #GoOpen campaign in the USA) (Office of Educational Technology, 2016). Open source and open education complement each other, and both focus on transparency and sharing information. The next section presents pros and cons of using OSS in engineering education.