Bio of a FOSS Person (Activity)

Title	Bio of a FOSS Person
Overview	Student will research an individual who has had significant influence on the FOSS movement and prepare a short biography.
Prerequisite Knowledge	A general introduction to the FOSS movement and history would be helpful.
Learning Objectives	Students should be able to explain how their individual contributed to the FOSS movement and why their contributions were significant. In addition, the student should be able to explain what it is about FOSS software that allows individuals to become influencers within their communities.

Background:

Note: This activity could be a good fit for a history or writing classes as well as computer science classes. In addition, if you have any cross-disciplinary classes, this would be an interesting project for them.

The Free and Open Software movement is has been shaped by several strong personalities, whose points of view have not always agreed.

Directions:

The purpose of this exercise is to become familiar with some of the people who have shaped the Free and Open Source world. Everyone below has made at least one (often more) major contribution(s) to FOSS. Your task is to pick one of these people, research their contribution to FOSS, and present it to the class. Consider ways that you could make your presentation interesting (visual aids, etc.). Use at least three sources (web is, of course, fine); you will turn in your citations. Target a 2-4 minute presentation.

In each instance, you've been provided with another factoid about the person so that you can insure you've found the right person.

• Linus Torvalds (named after Linus Pauling)
• Michael Tiemann (co-founded Cygnus Solutions)
• Brian Behlendorf (was a chief technology guru for the Burning Man festival)
• Bruce Perens (amateur radio call sign K6BP)
• Tim O'Reilly (born in County Cork, Ireland)
• Eric S. Raymond (contributed code and content to The Battle for Wesnoth)
• Richard Matthew Stallman (often known by his initials, rms)
• Guido van Rossum (worked at Zope Corporation)
• Paul Vixie (founded first anti-spam company, MAPS, which stood for “Mail Abuse Prevention System”)
• Eben Moglen (wrote a Metaphorical Corollary to Faraday's Law)
• Larry Wall (has a degree in Natural and Artificial Languages)

Deliverables:

Students will make a short presentation of their chosen FOSSers major contributions and turn in their list of sources.

Assessment:

Students can be graded on the completeness and correctness of the responses provided in the assigned work they turn in, as well as participation in the resulting discussion, should you choose to have one.

Comments:

• The interesting thing to me about this activity is that there is no single, legal "required" location for the license information, nor any text that it must include. This can make it challenging to find the license info for a project (but doesn't reduce the importance of doing so!).
• If you are working with an open source project, you should first locate the license for that project and use it as a jumping off point.

Suggestions for the Open Source Project:

It would be great if your project had information explaining why the project is licensed the way it is. If that information is available and you're willing to discuss it with students, that would make a really interesting (short) Skype or IRC chat.

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