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POSSE: Teaching teachers about open source
A small group of Computer Science (CS) professors gathered at Red Hat's corporate campus in Raleigh, North Carolina from July 19th to 24th for the Professors' Open Source Summer Experience (POSSE) 2009 workshop. The program focused on educating CS professors about open source development, including practical ways to get students involved in open source projects and how to integrate open source methodology into the classroom experience. The participants deemed the event a tremendous success and plan to continue it next year, hopefully expanding to new locations and fields of study.
POSSE 2009 was an outgrowth of the TeachingOpenSource.org site, a new, open community of teachers and software developers collaborating on educational issues. TeachingOpenSource.org's other projects include mentoring programs and producing teaching materials, but POSSE was its first attempt to gather educators and open source advocates for face-to-face meetings.
Hands-on introduction to open source
POSSE facilitator Greg DeKoenigsberg said that Red Hat intentionally
kept the pilot event small in order to "do it right.
" Due to a
pair of last-minute cancellations, five professors were able attend the
week-long workshop, joined by a small contingent of Red Hat employees and
by David
Humphrey and Chris
Tyler from Seneca College, two
CS professors with firsthand experience teaching open source in the
classroom.
The program for the week started by covering the basics of open source software itself, but devoted most of its time to concrete examinations of how open source projects function, from coordinating geographically dispersed teams with online communication tools to build tools and source code management, to packaging, debugging, and testing tools. All sessions were designed to be cumulative, not a la carte; the participants were given overnight assignments based on each day's events and the topics built in complexity over the course of the week.
The final sessions dealt with integrating open source software into classroom situations, including finding projects in which students can participate, setting expectations, assessing and grading student participation, and interacting with the broader open source community while running a classroom project. At the Friday wrap-up discussion, the professors presented course outlines, discussed what they had taken away from the week, and how to get faculty colleagues involved.
Attendee Matthew Jadud from Allegheny College described the event as
"a huge win
". Although he had open source experience through
several years of working on the Transterpreter virtual machine
project, he said that he still went into POSSE 2009 with questions about
how best to interact with and sustain open communities, adding "we
got that in spades.
" Seeing up close how large-scale open
communities operate was a revelation, he said. "There is a
difference between 'knowing' and 'understanding'. I think I *knew* some
things about open development processes, but now I'm beginning to
*understand* a few, and can see more clearly what I don't
understand. That's an exciting feeling. ... And, in seeing it, it became
less mysterious and more tractable.
"
DeKoenigsberg also regarded the event as a success, and noted that the information went two ways:
Education and the open source community
Bringing the education and open source communities closer together is a
win-win scenario, said DeKoenigsberg. Participating in open source gives
students the opportunity to work in real-world coding projects, on a
real-world scale, that the classroom simply cannot emulate. "The
upside seems so huge,
" he observed. "Students get invaluable
experience. Open source projects get badly needed help. Moribund CS
programs, most of which are struggling with slumping enrollments, get a
shot in the arm.
"
The difficulty, he observed, is practical. "Over the last few
years, I've had discussions with a lot of professors on this subject.
Their responses have been largely the same: yes, they're interested in open
source; yes, they'd love to teach it to their students; they don't know how
to get started; open source is intimidating; they don't have time to dig in
and learn.
" Professors have significant demands on their time
outside the classroom, he added, making it difficult to acquire the
knowledge necessary to guide students around open source.
POSSE tackles the challenge of winning over professors by putting them
in touch with like-minded peers, he said. "That's the hypothesis of
POSSE: that professors will respond to other professors, and that a
community of professors working together to solve these problems will be
more successful.
" Humphrey and Tyler's work at Seneca demonstrates
that teaching open source participation in the classroom works; their
students have a proven track record of success contributing to Mozilla and Fedora, respectively.
Bringing the two communities together involves more than just reaching
out to professors, however — open source projects must look for ways
in which they can foster mentoring relationships and be more accessible to
student participation. DeKoenigsberg cited Mozilla as an example of a
project with good student outreach. "Mozilla does a good job of this
in a number of ways; they have a special tag in Bugzilla that can denote
particular tickets as 'student friendly', which is something we're hoping
to replicate in Fedora.
"
Mozilla and Fedora were the two projects spotlighted in POSSE 2009, but
it was a pragmatic choice. "We certainly don't want to limit
professors to participating in particular communities,
"
DeKoenigsberg said. "We used Mozilla and Fedora projects as the
mechanism to introduce professors to open source development, but many
professors may already be engaged in research that leads quite naturally to
interest in other communities.
"
Planning for the school year and beyond
The professors that attended POSSE 2009 are making their own plans for
integrating what they learned with their curriculum, although the
integration might be difficult for the coming semester. Jadud said that he
plans to use open projects to a limited degree in the coming term, most
immediately in the data structures class, where he plans to have students
study the Mozilla codebase (among others) so that they can read and learn
from structures used "in the wild
".
Further out, he plans to apply POSSE's lessons to Transterpreter, but
would also like to collaborate on coding projects with some of his
colleagues at Allegheny. "It may be that we can renovate our
technical writing course so that our students are working on and
contributing to living, community-written documents while learning to write
and edit technical prose. Mind you, this was a revelation for me at POSSE,
that these large projects have so *much* going on, there are many, many
ways to get people involved.
"
For its part, TeachingOpenSource.org plans to keep in touch with the POSSE 2009 participants in the coming school year, working with them in the classroom. The group specifically wants to hear from open source projects that would like to work with a class of CS students for an entire semester, and are willing to provide mentoring, but individual mentors and guides are encouraged to join as well.
Other efforts still to come include a collaboratively-drafted textbook about teaching open source and associated classroom reference materials, and a one-day Teaching Open Source Summit to be held in October at the Free Software and Open Source Symposium in Toronto.
Those who could not attend this summer's inaugural workshop need not worry, more events like POSSE 2009 are in the works. DeKoenigsberg said that the group is already planning to expand the reach of next year's POSSE beyond CS, to include professors in technical writing and other related fields. It also hopes to run multiple POSSE sessions, although the limiting factor is currently the number of professors actively involved in open source software. As with its other projects, TeachingOpenSource.org encourages anyone who is interested in helping to organize a POSSE event in his or her own area to join the mailing list.
As DeKoenigsberg observed, when one asks open source developers how they
learned their development skills, most reply "I taught
myself
". Although the open source community's ability to
apprentice and mentor to new recruits is admirable, it does little formal
recruiting and training. At the same time, thousands of CS students come up
through college programs that focus mostly on proprietary tools and
development models. Better integrating the two communities could expand the
open source talent pool, and equip students with more skills as they
prepare to enter the job market.
New Releases
LFS-6.5 Released
The Linux From Scratch community has announced the release of LFS Version 6.5. "This release includes numerous changes from LFS-6.4 (including updates to Linux-2.6.30.2, GCC-4.4.1, and Glibc-2.10.1) and security fixes. It also includes editorial work on the explanatory material throughout the book, improving both the clarity and accuracy of the text."
Ubuntu Karmic Koala Alpha 4 released
The Alpha 4 release of Ubuntu's upcoming Karmic Koala distribution has been announced. "Alpha 4 is the fourth in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Karmic development cycle. The Alpha images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Karmic." Other available varients include Ubuntu Server UEC, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu Studio and Mythbuntu.
Distribution News
Debian GNU/Linux
Bits o' Bugs from the BTS
Click below for some bits from the Debian Bug Tracking System. Topics include New features, Architecture changes, Future, and a Call for Volunteers.Bits from Debian Pure Blends
Debian Pure Blends were previously known as Custom Debian Distributions. In these bits you can find out more about the Rename finished, New Blends, New features, Blends needing more support, and Ways to help Blends and Debian users in General.Debian Policy 3.8.3.0 released
Version 3.8.3.0 of Debian Policy is available. "I've just uploaded Debian Policy 3.8.3. The next time you upload a package, please check it against the new version of Policy and update Standards-Version in debian/control accordingly. A new release of Lintian calibrated for this release of Policy will be uploaded shortly."
Happy Birthday Debian
On August 16, 1993 Ian Murdock announced the Debian Linux Release on comp.os.linux.development. "This is just to announce the imminent completion of a brand-new Linux release, which I'm calling the Debian Linux Release. This is a release that I have put together basically from scratch; in other words, I didn't simply make some changes to SLS and call it a new release. I was inspired to put together this release after running SLS and generally being dissatisfied with much of it, and after much altering of SLS I decided that it would be easier to start from scratch. The base system is now virtually complete (though I'm still looking around to make sure that I grabbed the most recent sources for everything), and I'd like to get some feedback before I add the "fancy" stuff."
Fedora
Fedora Board Recap
Click below for a brief recap of the August 13, 2009 meeting of the Fedora Advisory Board. Topics include Russian Fedora Initiative, Thai community domain, and Spins and Download site redesign.
SUSE Linux and openSUSE
OpenSUSE cuts maintenance period to 18 months
The openSUSE project has sent out a brief note to the effect that the maintenance period for distribution releases is being reduced. "openSUSE will shorten the maintenance period to 2 versions plus 2 months which translates with the current release cycle of 8 months to 18 months instead of 24 months we had with openSUSE 11.1 and previous releases."
Creating a group of Users and Novell partners concerned about openSUSE lifespan
Click below for a post with some thoughts about a longer life span for openSUSE or an openSLE offering similar to CentOS. "At some of the event I and others I talk with have attended it is often asked "Why doesn't Novell offer an openSLE alternative?" People using the fedora->CentOS->RHEL talk of how many of the business they support move this route to become RHEL customers. I think we (being the SUSE prefered) really would benefit from a similar path. That is why I am trying to somehow get a group organized. So we are able to have our voice heard at the higher levels of Novell."
Other distributions
A possible change of direction for Foresight Linux
Foresight Linux is a derivative of rPath's distribution, focused on getting leading-edge software to users quickly. Michael K. Johnson, a familiar name currently at rPath, has posted an interesting set of suggestions on ways to reinvigorate Foresight development; he starts by suggesting that they drop rPath as the base system. "I think that Foresight needs to be based on an upstream distro that is regularly fully updated and refreshed, and that is maintained by distro specialists with experience and expertise that is just plain missing within the Foresight development community. That distro needs to be imported into a Conary repository; that will allow Foresight to continue to use Conary to manage the process of building a set of consistent modifications relative to that upstream distro, providing a true rolling release. That would allow Foresight developers to concentrate on only the problems inherent in integrating the very latest development source against a recent base that is relatively close to the basis on which the software is maintained."
CentOS 4.8 release delays again
Dag Wieers reports that CentOS 4.8 has been delayed again. "After the big CentOS 5.3 release delay in the beginning of 2009, the community witnesses history repeating with CentOS 4.8 being delayed even longer. It is unfortunate that 13 weeks after Red Hat released RHEL 4.8, CentOS is unable to release their own rebuild. It is not unusual people inquire about a new release only hours after Red Hat's release, but in this case repeating inquiries get positive response, but nothing materializes weeks after. The latest word comes from main developer Johnny Hughes." The CentOS 4.8 release notes are available.
Distribution Newsletters
CentOS Pulse #0904 - The CentOS Newsletter
This month's issue of the CentOS Pulse is available. "I give you the next monthly release of the Newsletter. It was mostly written at HAR2009 where CentOS had its only village and was visited by many people from the Community. There was a lot to discuss as the recent events have left an impact. The Open Letter to Lance resulted in a vast response from many and it seamed to be the News of the day. But this is not the only things that has happened."
Misc Debian developer news (#17)
This edition of miscellaneous news for Debian developers covers PTS news: accessibility, piuparts, l10n, cvs.debian.org (and its webwml repo) moved to Alioth, Git user's survey 2009, New source formats, and New mailing list debian-user-dutch.DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 316
The DistroWatch Weekly for August 17, 2009 is out. "Many people who use Intel graphics and a recent Linux distribution must have come to the same conclusion: this combination is a disaster. Performance and stability issues affecting thousands of users have so far filled many pages on various forums. But, as Caitlyn Martin reports, despite the best of effort to find workarounds and solve the problems, a universal solution that would work across all Intel graphics chipsets has yet to be found. In the news section, Ubuntu updates its netbook remix interface for "Karmic Koala", Novell appoints a dedicated group of developers for openSUSE, FreeBSD prepares for the grand launch of a major new version of its operating system, and the Linux community continues to examine the recent CentOS conflict. Also in the news, some development updates on two lesser-known but highly interesting distributions - Foresight Linux and GoboLinux. Finally, if you are interested in helping to test the upcoming release of Fedora 12, don't miss our tips section describing the way to upgrade Fedora 11 to the latest "Rawhide" with one command. Happy reading!"
Fedora Weekly News 189
The Fedora Weekly News for August 16, 2009 is out. "In this week's issue, an update on the progress of Fedora 12 (Constantine) Alpha release gets us started in Announcements. Our Marketing beat is offered by a new beat writer, Chaitanya Mehandru, who reports on the latest happenings with the Marketing Team, including an update on zikula deployment for Fedora Insight. In Ambassador news, an announcement of the three winners of the Fedora 11 release events contest, from three different regions of the globe. Quality Assurance offers detail on several past and upcoming Test Days and weekly meetings, and updates on Fedora 12 bug blockers. In news from the Translation Team this week, updates on the Fedora 12 release schedule as it pertains to translation and documentation, and announcement of the Translation Quick Start Guide in Russian, Polish, Dutch and Brazilian Portuguese. The Art/Design Team beat this week leads with a summary of discussion on the Fedora 12 theme meeting, followed by a report on the initial work in creating an Art Studio Fedora spin and rounds out with a discussion on the need for source control for Fedora Themes. Our issue rounds out with updates from the various virtualization communities and teams, including the availability of new Xen packages for Fedora for testing, and details on libguestfs 1.0.67 and libvirt 0.7.0 and their new features."
OpenSUSE Weekly News/84
This issue of the openSUSE Weekly News covers openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 5 released, People of openSUSE: Marcus Schaefer, Linux.com/Rob Day: The Kernel Newbie Corner: Kernel and Module Debugging with gdb, Guillaume DE BURE: More skrooge features, LDN: Kernel Log - Coming in 2.6.31 - Part2: Graphics, Audio and Video, and more.Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #155
The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for August 15, 2009 is out. "In this issue we cover: Karmic Alpha 4 released, New Ubuntu Members, Developer News, Reporting Ubuntu Community Problems: Jono Bacon, Ubuntu US Teams, UbuCon Atlanta 2009, Brazilian Council & New Brazilian Ubuntu Members, Zim & the art of wiki development, Ubuntu Server Tips - Help Wanted, Ubuntu Community Learning Project, Ubuntu Podcast #32, and much, much more!"
Distribution meetings
Ubuntu Developer Week
The next Ubuntu Developer Week has been scheduled for August 31 - September 4, 2009. Ask your questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat, and join #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net to participate in the sessions. Click below for more information.Announcing FUDCon Toronto 2009
The next North American Fedora Users and Developers Conference (FUDCon) has been announced. This FUDCon is scheduled for December 5 - 7, 2009 in Toronto, Canada at the Seneca @York campus.
Distribution reviews
Preview of Jolicloud: The social Netbook OS (Cnet)
Cnet reviews a Jolicloud beta release. "Although it's not done yet, there are some definite key features that make Jolicloud more than just a re-skinning of Linux. The idea that you can discover new applications and manage what you have installed on your machine in the same place is downright cool. So is the idea of having all your apps and settings synced up between multiple machines. I'm less enthralled by the idea of having to basically install bookmarks, and do away with having multiple windows open in the same desktop area--something I've grown very accustomed to on Macs and PCs. It's also still Linux, and comes with some of the same hang ups and the often-steep learning curve."
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