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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