Course Essentials
Class meetings:
Mondays and Wednesdays 3:30pm - 4:45pm, CIWW, Room 517
(attendance is mandatory).
Office hours:
Joanna:
Mondays 12:30 - 2:30pm, Thursdays 11:00am - 12:00pm, (or you can schedule an appointment if these times do not work for you) (423 CIWW)
Class discussion board: Slack
Post all course related questions to the discussion board. If you have questions
related to your grading, contact your instructor directly (office hours or email).
How to get help? Ask questions on discussion forums (Slack)! Ask questions during lectures! Talk to us (We cannot help, unless we know there is an issue). See the tutors and/or instructor during posted office hours or set up an appointment! Make sure you let us know as soon as you feel lost in the course. Do not wait till you start getting failing grades because it might be too late by then.
Course Description
Open Source Software Development
This course prepares students to become active participants in open source projects. It begins with an overview of the philosophy and brief history of open source development, followed by an in-depth look at different types of open source projects and the study of various tools involved in open source development. In particular, it covers the collaborative nature of open source projects, community structure, version control systems, licensing, intellectual property, types of contributions (programming and non-programming) and the tool-chains that enable such contributions.
The students are expected to contribute to existing open source projects.
Objectives and Outcomes
The objectives and outcomes are explained in the course syllabus. The objectives are repeated here. Students who successfully complete this course:
- will be able to explain to others the nature of open source software, particularly how it differs from proprietary software;
- will be able to evaluate open source software projects with respect to their maturity, level of activity, community friendliness, and complexity;
- will be able to find suitable open source software projects in which to participate;
- will become a contributing member of a software development community;
- will be able to choose an appropriate license for their creative works in general and to explain what can and cannot be done with software that has a specific license;
- will be able to explain how software licensing works in general, what choices of license exist; and
- will be able to give several examples of the ways in which companies earn money in the open source ecosystem.
Why Open Source Matters and Why Should You Care?
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Webopedia : software definition, software vs. hardware
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Computer Science Education in the 21st Century by David A. Patterson, Commun. ACM 49, (3): 27-30 (March, 2006)
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The Linux Foundation's 2018 Open Source Jobs Report is a report on jobs in the open source world in 2018.
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Open Source Software No Longer Optional By Gary Anthes, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 59 No. 8, Pages 15-17, 10.1145/2949684
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Open Source to the Core by Jordan Hubbard, ACM Queue, June 14, 2004, Volume 2, issue 3