Module 2

An essay which doesn't have to be like a book report, hurray!
Workflow software is, in a nutshell, any software which improves the productivity and/or efficiency of an individual or company's work process, usually by automating some or all of the process.  When I think of 'work flow software' three things come to my mind: cloud, cloud, and cloud.  Hosted solutions for companies such as Amazon's massive datacenters (https://aws.amazon.com/products/) and for individuals such as Dropbox (http://db.tt/KI0kguC) and CrashPlan+ (http://www.crashplan.com/consumer/crashplan-plus.html) are cloud-based.  And although it doesn't automate anything, I think that cloud-based Google Docs qualifies as workflow software.  Remote, concurrent, collaborative data manipulation definitely facilitates the flow of work.  Most "get things done" software like this can fall into this category.  Another that just came to mind is Remember the Milk (http://www.rememberthemilk.com/) which is like a super to-do list on steroids that I use to keep track of the many things I have to do daily.  I'm not sure that strictly speaking it is work flow software but it makes things easier to get done by keeping track of them for me.
Open source software just blows my mind.  What you have basically is a huge number of skilled programmers who write programs and let people download and use them for FREE.  Additionally since the source code is available, any other programmer with the skill to do so can modify it to his or her own specific needs or improve it by adding features, functionality, or patching bugs and security vulnerabilities.  Also for FREE.  Open source has provided the world with the GNU Privacy Guard (http://www.gnupg.org/) cryptosystem, the Linux operating system, Apache web server, and innumerable other applications for use by anyone who cares to search for and download them.  For FREE.
Thus far I've used the word 'free' which means "doesn't cost you anything," but open source is tied to the other meaning of free which is "free to do with as you please" and is the what the GNU project is all about.  I'm not a programmer but I agree with most of the free software movement's ideals.  The reason is that most of the basic ideas of software freedom correlate to those of political and civil freedom.
Outsourcing is subcontracting.  My personal opinion of it is pretty negative because I've worked many call center jobs and those are always subcontracted/outsourced.  When a company outsources part of their workload, they can reduce costs by not having to train or hire personnel to do that part of the work, and often times the outsourced work is sent to India or China or some other country where wages for trained professionals is just a fraction of the minimum wage in the U.S.  The issue I have is that when a company outsources they do it purely to save money, and not to provide better service to their customers or support for their product.  In the pursuit of slashing costs outsourcing companies like ACS and Convergys have to put in the lowest bid so to accomplish this little things like training and tools that work for the poor people who are going to be on the phones fall to the wayside.
Outsourcing isn't inherently bad.  It's just the execution of it that is.  For example since my expertise is in computers, when I my car needs maintenance or has something wrong with it I'm not going to try and fix it myself even though I probably could learn how.  No, it's much more effective to pay someone who already knows how to do it for their time and skill.  However when a company like HP outsources to India or Convergys and someone who knows as much about their computer as I know about my car calls for support and cannot understand the person on the other end, or the person on the other end can't help them because they have no tools to do so, the customer becomes justifiably angry.  When I worked those types of jobs I often wondered if the company ever did a cost-benefit analysis to determine if the money saved by outsourcing was greater than the revenue lost from irate consumers.  I always assumed that they didn't do the analysis because that would cost money too.