Lessons learned from an open-source University Project P. Basdaras, K. Chalkias, A. Chatzigeorgiou, I. Deligiannis, P. Tsakiri, N. Tsantalis Department of Applied Informatics University of Macedonia Thessaloniki, Greece 10 th Int. WSEAS Conf. on Computers, July 13, 2006, Vouliagmeni, Greece

Motivation Open-source software development  widespread trend According to OSI, the basic idea behind open-source software is that when programmers are free to read, redistribute and modify the source code, the software evolves First spark: Netscape's Navigator (1998)

Motivation July 2005: Project Initiation CSSE Lab, Dept. Applied Informatics, U. of Macedonia, Greece Aims: to help students understand practices and become familiar with the philosophical, technological, legal and social issues to log all aspects of the software development process software versions development effort programmer capability LOC types of changes

Project Description Project Domain: (typical choices: CRMs, ERPs, scientific software) Criteria motivation of as many students as possible be expandable in a number of axes Final Selection: Bet Analysis and Prediction clearly a "hot" topic (esp. for male students) many students had prior domain knowledge Can be expanded to many directions: filling coupons Statistical analysis of past data Visualization Use of AI Information retrieval from Web Risk analysis, portfolio management

Project Description Programming Language: Java object-oriented language  modular undegrads in our Dept. are familiar with Java large number of available API's facilitates development Development based on a widely used CVS Administrative team checks submitted code Every student is free to enhance functionality Project's Homepage maintains a "to do list"

Data Collection To obtain an account each participant provides info: age, studies, programming experience etc When committing a class (smallest piece of code than can be submitted): Class Name: Consumed Time (mins): Maintenance adaptive: corrective: perfective: Locality of change Local: Propagated: origin of propagation (list):

Supporting Software Diff tool for comparing different versions extracts new, deleted, modified classes/methods Log form Analyzer records and visualizes information provided by developers

Observations Student participation helps to comprehend basic practices and tools Development is carried out by a small group Intense activity when new requirements are published Number of bugs is limited Responsibility in following formal/informal rules Quick generation of multiple versions Further advertisement is necessary

Results - LOC Analyzed System: 44 functional commits, 13 classes

Results - NOO

Results – CBO, LCOM, WMC

Results – Commits per class (Log form)

Results – Development Time/class (Log form) In an actual project this indicates that capable programmers should be allocated to the most time and effort consuming modules

Results – Type of changes/class (Log form)

Results – Propagation of changes (Log form)

Conclusions Open-source projects embedded in CS curricula are beneficial: from a pedagogic point of view as a tool for collecting data Suitable project selection is important Participation is initially high / slowdown follows Offer incentives / Continuous Advertisement Rich experience for students / integrated with Software Engineering Courses

Lessons learned from an open-source University Project Thank you for your attention 10 th Int. WSEAS Conf. on Computers, July 13, 2006, Vouliagmeni, Greece