Open Source Software in Computer Science and IT Higher Education: A Case Study

The importance and popularity of open source software has increased rapidly over the last 20 years. This is due to a variety of advantages open source software has to offer and also the wide availability of the Internet in the early nineties. We identify and describe important open source software characteristics and then present a case study using open source software to teach three Computer Science and IT courses for one academic year. We compare fulfilling our educational requirements and goals with open source software and with proprietary software. We present some of the advantages of using Open Source Software (OSS). Finally we report on our experiences of using open source software in the classroom and describe the benefits and drawbacks of using this type of software over common proprietary software from both a financial and educational point of view.