[TOS] looking for feedback on ideas for an open source development course

Mel Chua mel at purdue.edu
Mon Mar 11 20:38:23 UTC 2013


I'll make suggestions on the reading list from the following perspective:

Seb, you've drunk the FOSS Kool-Aid in both Practice and Philosophy 
flavors for years (that's why it's such a joy to talk with you). Your 
students are likely to come in with a minimal and stereotypical view of 
FOSS, and little in the way of relevant experience to make sense of 
these readings with, so things that are vital and rich to you may be 
abstract and meaningless to them until they get hands-on dev experience 
in an *existing* community (+1 to that suggestion, btw -- it's hard to 
learn French without hearing fluent speakers in conversation with each 
other!). I'd think of all these readings as reflection prompts on their 
experiences in FOSS through the semester (the same way reading about 
Chinese culture makes a lot more sense after you've gone to China).

Grading (mostly for you, not your students):
* http://vocamus.net/dave/?p=680
* http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/OSD600#Grading

for everything practical and then some:
* Fogel, K. Producing Open Source Software (+1; Karl is revising this 
right now, 
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kfogel/updating-producing-open-source-software-for-2nd-ed)
* 
http://quaid.fedorapeople.org/TOS/Practical_Open_Source_Software_Exploration/html/ 
-- note that this *is* unmaintained and outdated (see recent threads on 
this list started by students interested in reviving work on the project 
-- editing/updating might be a good "learn to use mediawiki" assignment).

governance:
* Freeman, J. The "Tyrrany of Structurelessness" (on Seb's original 
list, but I haven't read it)
* Ostrom, E. Governing the Commons (on Seb's original list, but I 
haven't read it)
* The Starfish and the Spider (parts thereof; easy-read book)
* http://hbr.org/2001/12/what-leaders-really-do/ar/1 (not FOSS-specific, 
but short and a good discussion-starter on the "ask forgiveness, not 
permission" FOSS mentality vs the "wait for orders" students are often 
conditioned into)
* also consider: how important is this in the grand scheme of the 
course? are you trading-off the pragmatics of producing open source in 
exchange for more philosophy time? (The philosophy may not make sense 
until they have experience with the pragmatics.)

business models:
* Pentaho's Beekeeper stuff: 
http://wiki.pentaho.com/display/BEEKEEPER/The+Beekeeper (from Seb's 
original list, I haven't read)
* Asay, M. something by him like 
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10244853-16.html (from Seb's original 
list, I haven't read)
* You asked for stuff about Red Hat: 
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/02/how-red-hat-killed-its-core-productand-became-a-billion-dollar-business/ 
is short and readable
* You asked for Twitter/Github/Mozilla stuff: this might be a nice 
Github reading/media bundle -- 
http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/32530/is-the-github-business-model-successful 
(with video), 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/78991/why-is-github-more-popular-than-gitorious, 
and http://erickerr.com/github-is-eating-the-world from a HR point of 
view. Twitter isn't FOSS, but comparing it with identi.ca may be 
interesting; Mozilla you'll need to ask someone else for reading 
suggestions on.
* In general, http://opensource.com/business may be a nice "find 
something interesting to read from here" spot
* But again, is there a tradeoff between reading this and *doing* FOSS work?

classical (?) texts:
* RMS. Something. Or maybe just stuff from here; 
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ (I'd specifically have them read 
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)
* ESR. The Cathedral and the Bazaar (personal opinion: important 
historical document, BUT long and dated and the opinionated views of a 
single person who is often not transparent about clarifying his 
biases/positionality -- I know you're aware that not everyone sees the 
world like esr does/did, but if you choose this make sure your students 
also grasp the multivocal and often contradictory nature of FOSS 
culture, lest they think CATB is the Voice of God.)
* 
http://www.thelinuxdaily.com/2010/04/the-first-linux-announcement-from-linus-torvalds/

culture:
* Coleman, G. -- I love Biella's writing, but I'm not sure if her work 
is applicable for the course you described -- it's beautiful 
anthropology, but your students as new FOSS hackers won't recognized 
themselves in it -- yet -- so it'll likely remain theoretical rather 
than illuminating to them. I could see the epilogue on p. 207 of 
http://gabriellacoleman.org/Coleman-Coding-Freedom.pdf being a good 
"multivocality" counterpart to esr. Otherwise, I'd save Biella's work 
for another class.
* Kelty, C. Two Bits . (on Seb's original list, but I haven't read it)
* 
http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/the-cost-of-collaboration-for-code-and-art 
("is this true? if so, why do FOSS at all?")
* I'd have them choose an active project Planet feed to monitor each 
week for N weeks, summarizing X blog posts (X=3? 1-3 sentences per 
summary?) each week for the first Y weeks
* and/or the above with a mailing list. A good first-contribution for a 
few weeks is a weekly digest/summary of list activity sent back to the 
list, playing the journalist role in the community (public) while 
learning basic tools in the classroom (private) -- see 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue296?rd=FWN/LatestIssue for an 
example.

international participation:
* Tahkteyev, Y. Coding places . (on Seb's original list, but I haven't 
read it)
* You seem to use a lot of book-like/academic-paper readings as opposed 
to live/less-formal data, like 
http://fedoraproject.org/membership-map/ambassadors.html (constructed 
via https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_ambassadors_map; possible 
discussion-starter on the impossibility of accurately tracking FOSS 
contribution/usage)

something on gender in open source?
* again, although I care *deeply* about this topic, I'm not sure if it's 
going to be illuminating for students who don't already identify with 
the FOSS movement, and worry that if a female student's first exposure 
to FOSS is "there are no women!" before she *actually* gets into it, 
that could be off-putting. Also, it's just damn hard to discuss. But if 
you want to plunge in...
* 
http://infotrope.net/2009/07/25/standing-out-in-the-crowd-my-oscon-keynote/ 
(excellent first overview of the situation, plus see comments discussion)
* http://www.etsy.com/hacker-grants (what do you think of this program 
as a response?)
* https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen (or this?)
* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy 
(or this?)

Also, +1 to guests from the FOSS world coming to class -- not just to 
lecture, but to plunge in and review/hack/tinker/dialogue with students 
as they do their hacking in the lab.

Exciting times. Good luck!

--Mel


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