Internet Collaboration with
A SIGOSSEE Seminar in Stockholm 15ht of Sept 2005project manager Knut Yrvin Sept 13th 2005. Foils only for free distribution
SLX Debian Labs
● A complete ICT-solution for the schools – network architecture out of the box– operational concept– digital user profile– OpenOffice and 75 user programs
● Made on our mother tongue with the schools curriculum in mind
● Made for the school budget
Skolelinux-project as an example
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> 200 Skolelinux-schools
Hardware vendors: its many more3
The basic idea
● Pupils interested in technical, under-the-hood things – could learn by example – from source code written by expert programmers
● Using our own mother thong when travelling on the information highway
● Get more ICT-equipment and programs, and less time with maintenance. More for less
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Start
● 25 people said they would participate, 13 meet on the first meeting
● After a couple of moths we grew to 40● E-mails is efficient, but could turn into
flame-wars when people don't know each other
● Precise goals
Collaboration
● Had to apply for founding to make developer gatherings– The e-mailings got to hot– 29400 Euro for HW and the first 8
gatherings● Had to make an infrastructure for
developers and manuals for contributors
● Had to do a lot of motivating effort
Have to obey● All code, translations and documentation has to be
committed to the Concurrent Versions System on Internet
● Bugs has to be committed to the bug-tracking system
● Commit everything upstream. That means release often running code
● Follow the licence-terms
● Help people to help them selves
● The person who does something decides
Do-ocracy7
Some characteristics ● Started as an voluntary effort 2. July 2001● Contribution is over 64.000 man-hours from
~ 200 developers, translators, and testers● More than 22 developer gatherings with 20 until
190 participants – 16 in Norway with local Skolelinux-development
– 6 Internationally in Norway, Germany and Brazil
● The version system “is our project”
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Who is Skolelinux today(aka Debian-edu)
SLX Debian Labs (a foundation)
● A part of the Debian project
● 3-4 man years
A member organisation
● It's own border● 130 active developers● 30 over active developers● > 20 translators
9Developers and users
Some successes
● We are a Debian project– Debian edu, Custom Debian Distribution
for schools – turn key solution– New Debian installer, half thick clients
● A lot of attention and installations– Use in many countries– Awards (e.g. New Media Award 2004)
● Have kick-started others– etch w/security, Edubuntu many languages
Challenges
● Paying people doing software development● Maintenance when some people get interested
doing other things● Founding the gatherings● Making a sustainable commercial entity selling
maintenance services and up-keep– To founding development etc.
● Lack of open standards even if the policies are right (things takes time)
Q & A
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Real F/OSS effort is about● Using the F/OSS development methods and
tools – It costed us dearly when the County Councils did not
release the OpenOffice-translations
● Using Purchasing Requirements that don't discriminate: Universal Design Requirements– You can't just say: We want open source, and then buy
it as you did from your proprietary vendor
● Using Reference Implementations with running and maintained code (FEIDE is on sourceforge)– Please don't reinvent Open Source development
methods. You are not that good ...13
What's wrong with just using shrink wrap products methods?
excluding the true power of F/OSS development ...
14Jonathan Grudin: The development of interactive systems http://www.ics.uci.edu/~grudin/Papers/IEEE91/IEEE91.html
Users identified
Developers identified
Developers identified
Users identified
Users identified
Developers identified
COMPETITIVELY BIDCONTRACT DEVELOPMENT
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
IN-HOUSE ANDCUSTOM DEVELOPMENT
Time ProjectStart
SystemDelivered
Service financing
● Further development
● Translation● Architecture● Teaching aids● Handbooks● Sharing of best
practices
● introduction● courses● maintaining● day-to-day
operation● updates● expert help
Our contribution
> 64 000 h
Common-expenseswith the software
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Faster, Better, and Cheaper Free/Open Source Software Development (F/OSSD) often entails shorter development times that can produce higher quality systems, and incur lower costs than may be realized through developing systems according Software Engineering (SE) techniques. [...]
Internet time and F/OSSD projects also tend to produce incremental software releases at a much faster rate, even to the point of releasing unstable but operational daily system builds. This denotes not only a reduction in product release cycle times compared to SE practice, but also a significantly restructured life cycle process and process cycle time reduction.
Walt Scacchi from Institute for Software Research University of California, Irvine
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~wscacchi/Papers/New/Scacchi-BookChapter.pdf
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ICT at school is really about:
● Using the system to send drawings to school classes in other countries. Learning to express, sharing and learn.
● The system is used to make music, to read, gather information or decode words (in lower grades).
● It's not about office-administration with 3-4 office-products!
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