Developing Student skills

through Open Source

 

Arjuna Rao Chavala

arjunaraoc@googlemail.com 
Text: Copyright: CC-ASA-2.0
Images: Wikipedia commons
29 Sep  2009
Agenda

• What is Open  Source

• History of Open Source
• Open source licenses
• Student 's  dreams about Work life and Reality
• Skills required for work life 
• Open source tasks and benefits 
• How can  Students  participate?
• My own  experience
• Questions
Acknowledgments: Wiki Commons  for the images  and
wikipedia for   definition quotes.
Open Source

• Open source software  is an approach to the design,

development, and distribution of software, offering
practical accessibility to a software's source code
o Examples: Linux kernel , GCC, Apache  etc
• Open source hardware  is   an approach to the design,
development, and distribution of hardware , offering
practical accessibility to  hardware's documents
o Example: Original IBM PC , Simputer
 
History of Open source

Xerox printer software case 1980

• Stallman wanted to add a feature of intimating the job completion or
machine jam status to users that he developed for a  printer.  
• He  was refused access to the source code for the software of the first laser
printer, the Xerox9700.  
• This one experience convinced Stallman of people's need to be free to
modify the software they use
Richard Stallman  and 4 software freedoms  (1985)
• run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0)
• study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1)
• redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2)
• improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that
the whole community benefits (freedom 3)
Open source Licenses

• GPL : GNU  General Public License

o Grants the recipients of a computer program the rights
of the free software definition and uses copyleft to
ensure the freedoms are preserved, even when the work
is changed or added to. 
o This is in distinction to permissive free software
licenses, ex:  BSD licenses
• LGPL: Lesser GNU  General Public License
o Modified, more permissive, version of the GPL, originally
intended for some software libraries.
Student's dreams about Work Life and  Reality

Student's Dreams
• Develop   great  innovative products
• Work with latest technologies
• Earn good money
• Enjoy Life
Reality
• Majority of projects are maintainance
• Cobol, Fortan, Ada and Pascal  are still in use
• Good money:-)
• Tough deadlines  and long working hours
    
Skills required for work life

• Technical skills
o Learn  new/old technologies
• Process skills
o Configuration Management
o Change management
o Life cycle  management
• Domain skills
o Learn  terminology and foundations of  different domains
• Soft skills
o Communication skills
o Leadership skills
o Collaboration  skills 
Open source projects  tasks  and
benefits
Tasks
• Use
• File Bugs
• Develop Bug Fixes
• Develop documentation
• Participate in events
Benefits
• Understand Configuration Management
• Understand  Build and Release  process
• Communicate effectively with  other collaborators
 
How can  Students  participate?
• Select a project  
o Open source software projects
 http://www.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectList
 http://sourceforge.net/
 http://code.google.com/ 
o Open source hardware projects
  http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Hardware/Open_Source/
• Contribute  a bug, bug fix, documentation, translation
• Attend  Unconferences  like Barcamp to learn about technology, business
strategy etc
• Participate in  contests
o http://beagleboard.org/ 
o http://www.ieee.org/web/membership/students/scholarshipsawardscon
tests/ieeextreme.html
 

 
How can  Faculty  help?

• Identify  Open  source  areas of  excellence for the Student

Branch
o Linux kernel
o Applications
o Graphics
o Language computing
o Wikipedia projects
• Mentor  students  to contribute to Projects
• Enable code fests/hacks/Unconferences
• Spread the message of  Open source.
My own experience with Open source

Contributor to  Pango (International text processing engine)

• Interested in  indic computing as a hobby.
• Used to try out each Linux release from 2005
• Noticed several issues with Indic support
• Filed  bugs
• Worked on few bug fixes.
Contributor to Firefox Telugu
•  Reviewed Telugu Translation
• Updated and Maintained  from 3.0.2
Questions??