Open Source Software -- A Brief Study

0. Resources

• http://www.opensource.org/: where open source is defined.
• http://sourceforge. net/: largest site for hosting open source software development. SEarching for "courseware" returns no result.
• http://freshmeat.net/: another popular open source portal. Searching for "courseware" turns out only one project: Whiteboard Courseware System.
• http://osdir.com/: O'Reilly OS source emphasiziing stable projects. No result on "courseware"
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/: Eric Raymond seminal paper "The cathedral and the bazaar" It providesd the philosophical basis of open source software development and coined the "law" of "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."
  

1. Advantages and disadvantages

• Conept of open source development describe in sourceforge.net:

The concept of 'Open Source' promotes the benefits of collaborative development by ensuring that potential end-users are able to obtain and use software, and that the software may be improved and expanded to meet the needs of its users. Collaboration within the Open Source community (developers and end-users) promotes a higher standard of quality, and helps to ensure the long-term viability of both data and applications.

2. Open source development management

• http://www.welchco.com/02/14/01/60/00/10/3101.HTM: Managing Projects the Open Source Way.
  • Contains most good advice in software engineering.
  • However, some points in good development management are also mentioned, such as:
    • The ship can have only one captain.
    • The project founder and the project lead do not necessarily have to be the same person.
    • Each team member should know the rules and responsibilities.
    • Establish a community.
    • Give everyone a goal.
    • Make sure every team member knows that he or she is valued.
    • Don't carry dead weight for too long.

3. Licensing

http://opensource.org/licenses/osl.php contains a listing of many popular open source licenses (about 40 of them), including the famous GPL (GNU). Our challenge is to come up with one that works for courseware (by using or adapting from an existing one.) The difference in course contents and software are many.

We probably need legal help such as from Dr. Sung.