FOSS Course, UPenn, Murphy

HERE WE GO!

0. Overview

Course Name	Open Source Software Development
Course Overview	This course exposes students to the cultural, technical, and legal aspects of FOSS development and provides students with an opportunity to work on a real-world open-source software project, and gain experience in software maintenance and enhancing software quality.
Instructor Contact Info	Chris Murphy
Student Characteristics	The course is targeted to upper-level undergraduate or graduate students.
Prerequisites	Students should have completed a traditional software engineering course and have had experience working in groups. They should be familiar with GitHub and the target programming language for the FOSS project on which they will work.
Infrastructure	The class meets twice a week for 75 minutes each. In general, one of the class meetings will consist of discussions of the reading assignments and/or guest speakers, and the other class meeting that week will be for learning activities, project status updates and presentations, or time to work on the project.
Offerings	Univ of Pennsylvania: Fall 2016 (14 undergraduates)

1. Learning Objectives

• objectives & prerequisites should be active, student-centered, specific, and measurable
  • the student will be able to...
• for the entire course, and/or for FOSS-specific parts of the course
• might include content & process skills
• might consider all levels of Bloom's taxonomy

2. Methods of Assessment

Each week, students are expected to post to their public blogs a 200-300 word response to the weekly reading assignment. In some cases, specific prompts may be given but in general the prompt is open-ended. Blog posts are assessed on the following scale:

• Exceptional: a blog post that is particularly insightful, thorough, or thought-provoking
• Satisfactory: a blog post that demonstrates that the student has read the articles, understands their main points, and can synthesize a response including personal insight
• Unsatisfactory: a blog post that demonstrates that the student has not read the articles, does not understand the main points, and/or is simply summarizing the readings but not relaying any personal insight
• Not submitted: when it's... ya know... "not submitted"

Students are also expected to attend and participate in all discussions of the reading assignments. Participation is assessed on the following scale:

• Exceptional: numerous contributions to the discussion that are particularly insightful, thorough, or thought-provoking
• Satisfactory:

3. Course Outline

Week	Topics/Activities	Reading Assignments
1	Course Introduction Course logistics Brief overview of FOSS Fossisms Blogs, IRC, and GitHub Activity: Blog_Activity Activity: Intro_IRC_Activity Activity: Git:_GitHub_Issues_and_Pull_Requests
2	FOSS Background What are the intellectual, technical, and cultural foundations and justifications of FOSS? How does FOSS differ from commercial software? FOSS Field Trip and Project Evaluation Learning Activity -- COMING SOON!	Wikipedia article on FOSS Eric Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar Richard Stallman, "Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software"
3	Getting Started in FOSS How do you learn about a FOSS project's culture and community? How do you get involved in and known within a community? Start Getting Involved in Project Learning Activity -- COMING SOON!	https://opensource.com/life/13/4/ten-ways-participate-open-source https://blog.newrelic.com/2014/05/05/open-source_gettingstarted/
4	Ways of Contributing to FOSS What are the different types of contributions someone can make to a FOSS project? What is the process of making contributions?	https://icontribute.wordpress.com/how-to-contribute-to-open-source-without-coding/ http://blog.smartbear.com/programming/14-ways-to-contribute-to-open-source-without-being-a-programming-genius-or-a-rock-star/ http://words.steveklabnik.com/how-to-be-an-open-source-gardener
5	What Motivates People to Contribute to FOSS Why do people contribute to FOSS projects? In what ways are people rewarded for their contributions? Does motivation rely on the type of contribution, or vice-versa?	Yunwen Ye and Kouichi Kishida, "Toward an Understanding of the Motivation of Open Source Software Developers", ICSE 2003 J. Blitzer, W. Schrettl, and P. J. H. Schroder, "Intrinsic Motivation in Open Source Software Development", Journal of Comparative Economics 35:1
6	Licensing and Legal Issues Something Something Else	http://opensource.org/faq http://opensource.com/law/13/1/which-open-source-software-license-should-i-use http://oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/fossandpatents
7	FOSS Business Models and Opportunities Something Something Else	https://handsontable.com/blog/articles/5-successful-business-models-for-web-based-open-source-projects http://www.zdnet.com/article/11-open-source-business-models/ http://www.cio.com/article/2944334/open-source-development/why-the-open-source-business-model-is-a-failure.html
8	HFOSS Something Something Else	http://timreview.ca/article/399 https://opensource.com/life/15/2/getting-involved-hfoss http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/09/hfoss_software_for_humanity_computer_science_students_solve_real_world_problems.html
9	FOSS Success Stories Something Something Else	http://mediashift.org/2013/08/6-things-to-know-about-successful-open-source-software/ http://www.infoworld.com/article/3058778/open-source-tools/the-secrets-to-linkedins-open-source-success.html http://www.techrepublic.com/article/red-hats-open-source-success-story-built-on-killing-complexity-in-it/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/13/please-dont-tell-me-you-want-to-be-the-next-red-hat/
10	Starting and Growing a FOSS Community Something Something Else	http://oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/howtobuildcommunity http://www.drdobbs.com/open-source/building-and-maintaining-an-open-source/240168415 https://opensource.com/business/14/7/building-open-source-community
11	Criticisms of FOSS Something Something Else	http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community http://www.techrepublic.com/article/linux-creator-linus-torvalds-doesnt-really-care-about-open-source/ http://www.infoworld.com/article/2905331/open-source-software/the-new-struggles-facing-open-source.html

4. Notes to Instructor

• Tips, suggestions, lessons learned (warnings)...

5. Moving Forward

• what next steps are desirable or possible for this course

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