Internet Collaboration with A SIGOSSEE Seminar in Stockholm 15ht of Sept 2005 project manager Knut Yrvin Sept 13 th Foils only for free distribution SLX Debian Labs

● A complete ICT-solution for the schools – network architecture out of the box – operational concept – digital user profile – OpenOffice and 75 user programs ● Made on our mother tongue with the schools curriculum in mind ● Made for the school budget Skolelinux-project as an example 2

> 200 Skolelinux-schools Hardware vendors: its many more 3

The basic idea ● Pupils interested in technical, under-the-hood things – could learn by example – from source code written by expert programmers ● Using our own mother thong when travelling on the information highway ● Get more ICT-equipment and programs, and less time with maintenance. More for less 4

Start ● 25 people said they would participate, 13 meet on the first meeting ● After a couple of moths we grew to 40 ● s is efficient, but could turn into flame- wars when people don't know each other ● Precise goals

Collaboration ● Had to apply for founding to make developer gatherings – The ings got to hot – Euro for HW and the first 8 gatherings ● Had to make an infrastructure for developers and manuals for contributors ● Had to do a lot of motivating effort

Have to obey ● All code, translations and documentation has to be committed to the Concurrent Versions System on Internet ● Bugs has to be committed to the bug-tracking system ● Commit everything upstream. That means release often running code ● Follow the licence-terms ● Help people to help them selves ● The person who does something decides Do-ocracy 7

Some characteristics ● Started as an voluntary effort 2. July 2001 ● Contribution is over man-hours from ~ 200 developers, translators, and testers ● More than 22 developer gatherings with 20 until 190 participants – 16 in Norway with local Skolelinux-development – 6 Internationally in Norway, Germany and Brazil ● The version system “is our project” 8

Who is Skolelinux today (aka Debian-edu) SLX Debian Labs (a foundation) ● A part of the Debian project ● 3-4 man years A member organisation ● It's own border ● 130 active developers ● 30 over active developers ● > 20 translators 9 Developers and users

Some successes ● We are a Debian project – Debian edu, Custom Debian Distribution for schools – turn key solution – New Debian installer, half thick clients ● A lot of attention and installations – Use in many countries – Awards (e.g. New Media Award 2004) ● Have kick-started others – etch w/security, Edubuntu many languages

Challenges ● Paying people doing software development ● Maintenance when some people get interested doing other things ● Founding the gatherings ● Making a sustainable commercial entity selling maintenance services and up-keep – To founding development etc. ● Lack of open standards even if the policies are right (things takes time)

Q & A 12

Real F/OSS effort is about ● Using the F/OSS development methods and tools – It costed us dearly when the County Councils did not release the OpenOffice-translations ● Using Purchasing Requirements that don't discriminate: Universal Design Requirements – You can't just say: We want open source, and then buy it as you did from your proprietary vendor ● Using Reference Implementations with running and maintained code (FEIDE is on sourceforge) – Please don't reinvent Open Source development methods. You are not that good... 13

What's wrong with just using shrink wrap products methods? excluding the true power of F/OSS development Jonathan Grudin: The development of interactive systems Users identified Developers identified Users identified Developers identified COMPETITIVELY BID CONTRACT DEVELOPMENT PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT IN-HOUSE AND CUSTOM DEVELOPMENT Time Project Start System Delivered

Service financing ● Further development ● Translation ● Architecture ● Teaching aids ● Handbooks ● Sharing of best practices ● introduction ● courses ● maintaining ● day-to-day operation ● updates ● expert help Our contribution > h Common- expenses with the software 15

Faster, Better, and Cheaper Free/Open Source Software Development (F/OSSD) often entails shorter development times that can produce higher quality systems, and incur lower costs than may be realized through developing systems according Software Engineering (SE) techniques. [...] Internet time and F/OSSD projects also tend to produce incremental software releases at a much faster rate, even to the point of releasing unstable but operational daily system builds. This denotes not only a reduction in product release cycle times compared to SE practice, but also a significantly restructured life cycle process and process cycle time reduction. Walt Scacchi from Institute for Software Research University of California, Irvine 16

ICT at school is really about: ● Using the system to send drawings to school classes in other countries. Learning to express, sharing and learn. ● The system is used to make music, to read, gather information or decode words (in lower grades). ● It's not about office-administration with 3- 4 office-products! 17