HFOSS - paper presenters

The following paper presentations are happening with slide presentation and I believe that they take less than 15 minutes.

Position statements are next after these presentations.

NOTE: Slides are not available or linked from the website
NOTE 2: Excuse me if some notes are not easily understood

Presenters:

• Timothy Budd (Oregon State University)
• Gary Thompson (San Francisco State University, Sun Microsystems)
• Yunrim Park (Oregon State University)
• Cay Horstmann (San Jose State University)
• Linda Seiter (John Carroll University)

Comments:

Some of the comments during the presentations worth highlighting were:

• Best teams have been the ones that CS students have been mixed with students from other disciplines
• Some people highlighted that what Linda has been doing makes it easier to help NPOs with open source tools since they are most graphical rather than command line oriented
• Students do not learn to read code before writing it
• Lack of tool knowledge by students

Notes from the presentations:

Timothy A. Budd (Oregon State University)

"A Course in Open Source Development"

• Paterson's editorial - Open Source course would be the course I would love to take
• We teach writing before reading code - wrong way
• Important about Open Source:
• Code
• Community
• Tools and self-development
  
• Process is not well articulated - No text books in this
• Professor teach what they have been taught. Who has experience in FOSS
  
• Open source merit badges
• First assignment - what is your passion? do some introspection
• Next assignment - contribute something of wikipedia
• Make the students present
  
• Outside speakers
• A paper or patch every two weeks
• it doesn't have to be accepted
• peer reviewed by students
• It is all about the process, not the product

Gary Thompson (San Francisco State University, Sun Microsystems)

"Teaching Distributed Collaborative Development Techniques in a Software Engineering Class Setting"

• this is a course in distributed development
• Global Software Engineering
• a student's project example - http://csc640-03.dev.java.net
• every day he sees the need of developers that have the open source methodologies
• dstributed collaborative class among few universities
  
• this is a process oriented class, not a technology oriented class
• globalization
• outsourcing
• and others
• students learn by doing things
• break students into teams and assign project
• they have to go through the whole software development cycle
• we treat the team as start ups
• we provide all the teams the needed tools
• software development tools
• netbeans, java EE, linux, open Solaris
• collaborative tools
• archive mailing lists, version control, skype, IM
• require the completion of 6 milestones
• description of milestone 0
• first 2 weeks of class
• they have to setup the environments
• students normally don't estimate properly how much work it takes to setup the tools
• this milestone helps them deal with that immediately
• CCLI Grant Proposal to National Science Foundation
• he presents some publications on their last slide
  

Yunrim Park (Oregon State University)

"Supporting the Learning Process of Open Source Novices: An Evaluation of Visualization Tools"

• this presentation talks about that visualization tools helps the learning process of the source code. It also explains the experiment
  
• overwhelming
• feeling that you have to know the whole project before you can submit patches
• dealing with a large code base
• learning about the community
• interaction with existing members of the community (intimidation)
• finding entry points (hard)
• lowering barriers: visualization
• lower the "cost" of joining OSS projects?
• they did an experiment to see if visualization tools help them
• group A
• access to open source sourceforge website, wiki, tracking system
• group B
• two eclipse plug-ins
• group C
• two standalone tools
• Change history (Augur)
• you can see in different colors the authors of the modifications
  
• Code Structure (Creole)
• you can see a diagram on how the source code is connected
• completeness vs correctness
• in SUMMARY:
• information visualization helps
• Creole and Version tree both provided insights into overall code organization and structure
• Source Forge was really intimidating
• Females showed low self-efficacy in activities that involve close interaction with other members
  

Cay Horstmann (San Jose State University)

"Challenges and Opportunities in an Open Source Software Development Course"

• The OSS Class at SJSU
• the focus on gaining an understanding of the open source methodologies, business aspects
• students are not very tools savy
• version control
• build automation
• patching
• test automation
• cross-platform development
• we have to spend a lot of time in teaching tools
• tools are not the only problem
• they lack the human skills
  
• reading before asking
• asking good question
• putting yourself into their shoes
• effective participation in discussions
  
• submitting good patches
• business and legal background
• licenses
• paid vs voluntary contributions
• motivation
• organizational structure
• open standards
• patents and copyrights
• challenges
• vast difference in student skills
• many students lacking tool knowledge, cross-platform skills
• limited experience with OSS products (often only Firefox, Eclipse)
• social skills: asking questions, understands other perspectives
• surprise: the facebook generation is shy about being out in the open
• surprise: bad coders also most lacking in business skills
• benefits
• successfully working with large code base greatly increases confidence
• students were motivated to do better when seeing marginal coding practices
• tools become second nature
• students gain respect for platform and configuration issues
• first exposure to legal, business, professional issues for many students
• conclusions
• course stresses skills that are valued by employers
• have realistic expectations
• push for curricular improvements
• tools taught earlier
• learn how to read code, not just write it
  

Linda Seiter (John Carroll University)

"Computer Science and service learning: Empowering nonprofit organizations through open source content management systems"

• capstone course
• traditional issue - sustainability of that project
• NPOs are the least capable to maintain projects
• John Caroll University - Center for Service and Social Action
• 2007 - 1300+ volunteers (~3000 undergrads)
• 70+ nonprofit community partners
  
• no computer students unfortunately got involved
• business school case studies
• have web presence
• charity events
• lack of technical staff
• NOSI - Nonprofit Open Source initiative
• class taught at their university
• most popular FOSS software
• CMS
• CRMS
• CS444 - Adaptive and open software systems
• computer info systems learning objectives
• free and open artifacts
• explore business and societal impact of FOSS
• readings, peer review
• CS444 - Service Learning
• build web site
• train end users of the CMS system
• service activities with community partner
  
• contribute to open source CMS
• She shows a web site as an example:
• "Interfaith Hospitality Network of Greater Cleveland"
• "Thea Bowman Center"
• Good together: FOSS + NPOs