User:Jmcguffee

Latest revision as of 09:50, 7 February 2017

James W. McGuffee

James McGuffee is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Computer Science Department at Northern Kentucky University (NKU). NKU is located approximately 5 miles south of downtown Cincinnati. The Computer Science Department at NKU has over 850 students in five degree programs. The three undergraduate degrees are: computer information technology, computer science, and data science. The two masters degree programs are in computer information technology and computer science.

I am interested in exploring how I may use FOSS and HFOSS to engage students in out-of-class collaborative projects and how FOSS projects can be used to introduce/inspire first semester freshmen to the larger world of computing (beyond the syntax of a first language).

As part of POSSE 2014, I would like to work with the OpenMRS HFOSS community.

A. 4 Intro IRC Activity

Part 1 - Questions

How do people interact? -Via short text bursts

What is the pattern of communication? -short, choppy sentences with no great regard for puncuation or grammar

Are there any terms that seem to have special meaning? - #info, #action, #topic, *, #endmeeting

Can you make any other observations? - the folks chatting seem to know each other prior to this conversation

Part 3 Summarize your observations (of your selected HFOSS project) on your faculty wiki page.

I chose the OpenMRS proejct. I tried to create an OpenMRS account but my IP was flagged as SPAM. This may be related to recent concern re: "heartbleed".

I think I observed that MOST of the development community uses Google Hangouts to communicate and NOT IRC technology. I was able to view some video captures of Google Hangouts meetings. The meetings seemed to take a LONG time to make even the simplest of point.

A.6 Anatomy of a FOSS Project Activity

On your wiki page indicate the types/categories of tickets listed on this page as well as the information available for each ticket. types: defect and enhancement info available for each: ticket #, summary description, type, status, owner, priority, and milestone

Can you determine from the information provided here whether the project uses a web-based common repository or a local repo? Place your answer on your wiki page. Yes I can determine that information.

Include an entry on your wiki page that describes how the release cycle and roadmap update are related. Roadmap is updated at the beginning of each release cycle.

The SahanaEden site is more green color motif while the Sugar Labs was more orange.

How is the information here different than the information found on the Sugar Labs tracker page? Lots of different types of reports available.

Click the Active Tickets link. Indicate the types/categories of tickets listed on this page as well as the information available for each ticket. defect/bug, enhancement, taks, and documentation

The installation guidelines begin here with the option to specify your operating system. For this exercise, choose Linux, then Developer, and finally Manually. At the bottom on the page click click what?

Can you determine from the information provided here whether the project uses a web-based common repository or a local repo? Place your answer on your wiki page. Yes, I can do this.

Information about Sahana Eden's release cycle and roadmap can be found here. Include an entry on your wiki page that describes the information you find here. milestones

B.1 FOSS FIELD TRIP ACTIVITY

Part 1 - SourgeForce

I used the search term "charity" and it returned four projects

The languages used were C# and BASIC

I only saw two categories, Pre-Alpha and deployed

I choose the project named "Family Feud" to answer the rest of the questions

This project was created for Penfield High School's National Honor Society as part of the yearly charity fundraiser it is licensed GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLx3)

1. purpose is to simulate Family Feud television game show

2. unable to determine an answer to this question

3. Penfield HS NHS - from description

4. May 2013

5. not very - seems like a "one shot" development

6. none

7. no, seems too niche

Part 2 - Ohloh (Mifos)

Written mostly in Java

2,677,249 lines of code

code locations: 6 in U.S., 5 in northern Europe, 1 in India, and 1 in Australia

written in 19 languages

2nd most used langauge is PHP

language with the highest comment ratio is PERL

approx. 4 avg number of contributors over the past 12 months

the top 3 contributors have been on the project for about one year each

this past year there were 134 down 87% from the previous year

B.2 Project Evaluation Activity

XLSX file - File:BET.xlsx

B.4 FOSS in Course

One of the things I was interested in doing was to use open source as a way to introduce first-semester freshmen (in a seminar type course) to the broader world of software development (as opposed to learning just the basics of syntax). It has been my experience that often our students don't see the forest for the trees. To that end I think the exercises I've been going through as an educator would be useful for students. E.G. # of contributors, lines of code, various langauges used on a project, etc....

C.1 completed 21 MAY 2014

C.2 Bug-Tracker Activity Part 1 - Bug Reports

Open a browser and go to the GNOME Accessibility Bugs Done

Define what each of the column names below indicate. Include the range of possible values for 2-7 below. Feel free to explore beyond the page to find more information. I spent quite a time looking, including reading all the docs for bugzilla and I was unable to find the answers. I think the folks assume the column titles are self explanatory. Below are my best guesses

ID - identification, a number Sev - severity, some values = enh , min , nor , maj Pri - priority, values = Nor (normal) , Low , Hig (high) OS - operating system, values = all, linu , sola Product - product - name of the product Status - values - UNCONFIRMED, NEW, ASSIGNED, REOPENED, NEEDINFO Resolution - this column was blank Summary - text summary

Describe how you discovered the definitions and How did you find the information from above? guessed, read the page

Identify the order in which the bugs are initially displayed? the order above

What is the meaning of the shading of some bug reports? I don't know

What is the meaning of the colors used when describing a bug (red, gray, black)? not sure

Select a bug that you think that you might be able to fix and look at it more closely (click on the bug number). Identify when the bug was submitted. Identify if there has been recent discussion about the bug? Is the bug current? Is the bug assigned? To whom? Describe what you would need to do to fix the bug. Repeat the previous step with a different kind of bug.

Not sure I could fix any of these bugs. I am productively lost.

Part 2 - Collective Reports

Click on the “Reports” link on the top of the page. How many bug reports were opened in the last week? How many were closed? 161 / 215

What was the general trend last week? Were more bugs opened than closed or vice versa? more closed

Who were the top three bug closers? Why is this important to know? Matthias Clasen , Michael Schumacher , Jim Nelson they are active

Who were the top three bug reporters? Are these the same as the top three bug closes? What is the overlap in these two lists? Jim Nelson, Yosef Or Boczko , Kat No Jim Nelson is on both lists

Who are the top three contributors of patches? Yosef Or Boczko , Florian Müllner , Evan Nemerson

Who are the top three reviewers of patches? What is the overlap between these lists and the bug closers and bug reporters? What is the overlap between patch contributors and patch reviewers? Sebastian Dröge (slomo) , Bastien Nocera , Matthias Clasen none in top three

Click on the “Generic Reports” link. there is more than one link labelled generic

Plot the Severity of each Version of the Accessibility features of Empathy. ?

What other reports can you generate? ?

C.3 Completed and earned my Try Grit badge Click to See Badge

C.4 FOSS in Course Planning 2

1) In-class activity for first semester freshmen LOs Gain an appreciation for the complexity of software systems This is a task where I would need to find a suitable project (i.e. one that has enough "stuff") and have the students, in groups, explore what is out there.

2) Project - ongoing student research I have an idea for a long term project that I'm beginning to think might be a really good HFOSS (humanitarian free and open source software) project. The basic idea is that it's a geographically constrained social services locator based on the demographics and location of the user. I think the first thing I need to do is come up with a catchy acronym for the name of the project as that seems to be an important part of most FOSS projects.