English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

I played the role of organizer for group 4 in this first week of the project. I contacted the other group members via email and shared my name, email, AIM s/n, and google account, and urged everybody to respond back with the same information. I also recommended we utilize google docs for this project, and am adding members of the group to have shared access to the documents. We picked a topic and split up the work: this week I would write the group activity report which was done and submitted by Friday night and we will rotate who writes this every week.

The topic we selected was open source vs Microsoft software for use in educational/academics/not-for-profit businesses. I'm a computer technology major and thus have background knowledge of this subject. Matt and I have also done some preliminary research and located four or five internet sources with information ranging from cost of ownership of different systems, to example schools, businesses, and governments that have had success with both open source and Microsoft products. We plan to keep the white paper as objective as possible, as both choosing an open source solution such as a Open Office, or a corporate solution like Microsoft Office, both have advantages and disadvantages.