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Student participation in open source projects (opensource.com)
Opensource.com is running an
article from a university professor on student participation in
development projects. "Clearly, there are also large differences in
culture. But I think that collaboration between open source and academic
realms can work, as there are also some strong commonalities between the
groups. The open source and academic environments both share the desire to
create something, to produce a product that people will use. Both groups
have a love of learning and both groups are based on the idea that
something (whether it is knowledge or software) should be accessible to
everyone. Both groups have a desire to belong to a professional group, to
be interacting as professionals and participating in ongoing professional
activity. And interestingly, I think both groups share the desire to be
self-directed and to have control over what they do."
(Log in to post comments)
Student participation in open source projects (opensource.com) Posted Dec 2, 2010 19:52 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] Usually the students go on to their next project at the end of the seminar and that's too fast for them to be useful to the Open Source community. It's only an extended involvement that will be much good.
Student participation in open source projects (opensource.com) Posted Dec 2, 2010 23:34 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]
The nature of undergraduate education is to teach students certain skills, which they will hopefully find helpful in later courses and after they graduate; for society, the goal is to have more people with those skills. The goal of student participation at the undergraduate level in open source shouldn't be to get working code for the project they are participating in, but rather to give them the instinct to participate in the development of the software they use over the rest of their careers, rather than only asking for features or coping with not having them.
Student participation in open source projects (opensource.com) Posted Dec 3, 2010 0:09 UTC (Fri) by ebiederm (subscriber, #35028) [Link]
A seminar is plenty of time for an itch scratching project or two. The kind of thing where a few lines here or there make a big difference in the usability of the software, even it if doesn't make a big difference in the
functionality of the software.
Furthermore a lot of opensource work is done as someone fixes just one thing about a program that causes them trouble, but the submitter does not become a regular contributor. Certainly that much can be done in a the length of a semester.
Eric
Student participation in open source projects (opensource.com) Posted Dec 5, 2010 19:19 UTC (Sun) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] It is not easy to assemble a few dozen students with itches to scratch, even much less itches that can reasonably be fixed in a single term.
Student participation in open source projects (opensource.com) Posted Dec 9, 2010 19:12 UTC (Thu) by ccurtis (guest, #49713) [Link]
I have my doubts about your assertion.
The way this could work out well is if the professor is the long term contributor, and assigns students appropriate tasks. The class would then essentially compete for the best implementation to be submitted upstream.
But this is broadly the same concept as the Google Summer of Code, with the caveat that instead of the students pursuing something they're specifically interested in, these students are trying to learn a skill. Rarely is the result of learning some wonder to behold (to the contrary, most learning is as a result of failure).
Having more students involved in open source concepts and communities is certainly a good thing for open source as a whole, but unlikely to be a panacea without significant cultivation on behalf of this professor.
Student participation in open source projects (opensource.com) Posted Dec 2, 2010 20:22 UTC (Thu) by lmb (subscriber, #39048) [Link]
Most academic projects performed in the Open Source space strive to improve understanding the community in scholarly terms; Open & Free Source, due to a variety of properties - transparency, most prominently, and proximity to the scientific method - lend themselves to this quite well.
However, Open Source is closer to engineering than to science; when we seek out knowledge, we do so to build, not vice-versa. So while overlap exists, it is not surprising that it is not complete.
Student participation in open source projects (opensource.com) Posted Dec 7, 2010 8:31 UTC (Tue) by jmm82 (guest, #59425) [Link]
Many students just post their homework for their operating systems class to kernel newbies and cause noise asking simple questions. I feel this gives academics a bad name.
I have read a lot of grad student research papers and most of them ignore real world issues and assume conditions unrealistic to the real world. I have found some research to have interesting findings, but I take most of the data with a grain of salt.
I was a college student and learned Linux in college, but I did not learn the culture until I graduated and got a job full time working with open source. Yet, I personally try to help.
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