Open Source - Software that has the original, human readable program available. Many programs are written in a language like C which is, as hard as it may be for a beginning programmer to believe, based on part of human language. It is written in text and follows rules that are somewhat like sentences and parts of speech. A program in a programming language can be read and understood (usually) by others and changed and repaired if necessary. That program is changed by another computer program, called a "compiler" into the machine language of the specific processor of the computer. At that point it is almost impossible for someone to modify or change. Most software is distributed compiled and others cannot know the original program that was used to create it. This is good for the companies that sell it, but it is not so good for the users because only the company that sells the program can repair it or enhance it. Open source programs can be repaired, enhanced and modified by anyone and thus are generally reliable and cutting edge.

Source Code Control - Source code is text that is in a special language or has special codes in it that are later changed by some program into something that a human would read. Source code control is a way to manage these documents so that each revision is saved and they are protected so that more than one person cannot work on it. It is sort of like a librarian that signs in and out the document and when one person has it, another cannot.

Keeping track of each revision and knowing who made the revision is an important aspect of quality management.

Quality - means more that "doing a good job." It is a set of techniques with names like "ISO 9000" or "Malcolm Baldridge." In short the techniques involve writing down what we intend to do, doing it and the revisiting what happened to see if it worked as well as we planned. We ask everyone involved if we could have done it better, and if so, we write down the new, better way and try again.