From the Processing and FLOSS, we can know that FLOSS is an acronym for Free, Libre, Open-Source Software, which is a sort of open source’s outcome and a long last thing from my viewpoint. A FLOSS software offers us varies of accessible applications, friendly community and an inclusive environment for developers and users.
As the article has mentioned, many professional applications will charge a lot of money for using which will be a bit unaffordable for general users. For myself, last semester we need to use Mad Mapper to do projection mapping and the free trial they offered only gives us limited features. Thus, we have to buy the license for it which is 35 EUROs. In this case, if we can have such an open source community like Processing offering a FLOSS software for Projection Mapping, it will really help me out. Yet, this is only a some but most related to ordinary users values for a FLOSS software.
Furthermore, one of the best things I like about the FLOSS software is the community. Instead of a commercial product’s community, FLOSS software’s community usually trends to become like newbie oriented and creative oriented, since members in the community are largely also members of the development environment. In this case, such a community will give an autonomy that benefits the software itself.
And the most interesting part is that user can also contribute to the software. In this case, users are developers, UI designers and owners of the software. Like the Blender or Processing, they are also outstanding software and they attract a lot of users to polish it and contribute to it. It is not only because it is a free software but also because its source code opens to everyone and allow users to contribute to. And it is exactly because it gives these FLOSS software a strength to live longer.