I was at first confused at what a whitepaper was and why
they were made but after the examples on the website I now understand that they
are a credible source of facts on a subject with little in the way of personal
opinion.  At the same time I was scared
about the general length of a whitepaper and I was wondering how my group was
going to be able to acquire that amount of information.  Having dealt with open course software in my
quick guide project I had a general idea about what open source technologies
are all about.  It was my idea to use
OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Office for my groups topic because of my use and one
of my other group members use of OpenOffice for our quick guide projects.  To combat my initial challenge of filling all
the space required of this paper, I will suggest that my group compares each of
the OpenOffice and the Microsoft Office programs.  Depending on how much detail we wish to go
into will determine how much space can be taken up.  I believe that the more in depth we go, the
more not just the readers will understand how similar the two suits are but my
group as the creators will understand as well. 

I believe that the concept of open source challenge the traditional
ideas of making money that all the world wants to do.  I believe that open source supports the idea
of progress because it allows more people to contribute and input their ideas
into many aspects of programming.