An Untapped Channel: Open Source Education in the Universities of

Technology and Research Labs in South Africa

Free Open Source Symposium (FOSS) 2009

Michael AdeyeyeUniversity of Cape Town/Cape Peninsula University of Technology

Table of Contents

Introduction

My Research Project

Tools at the Research Labs

Curriculum at the Univ. Of Technology

Problems Encountered by Students

My Efforts at the Univ. and Research Labs

How can the FOSS Communities help?

Introduction

I am an Information Technology Lecturer at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), South Africa.

I am also a Ph.D candidate at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa.

Although I have been using the Mozilla Firefox since the release of its ver. 1.0, I started hacking the codebase late 2007.

I developed a Web browser extension called TransferHTTP. It integrates Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) into the Mozilla Firefox.

I have been the campus rep. for the UCT for some time and now the regional leader for the Western Province of South Africa.

My Research Project

Project Title – A SIP-based hybrid architecture for HTTP Session Mobility.

Statement of Problem

Here is a short demo of my work. The Clients interaction – http://bit.ly/pQVKX The Proxy User Interface – http://bit.ly/7XPhc

Alice Bob

1

Hey Bob, I read an article that might be of interest to

you.

Good Morning Alice, ok, send me the link.

Alice launches one of the IM services that she uses and

sends Bob the link.

(GMAIL, YAHOO, FACEBOOK)

2

My Research Project

The TransferHTTP Proxy (http://137.158.126.21:8080/session-blocking-app)

My Research Project

It is a distributed and a centralized reference system for service creation.

Services available at the proxy: Web session mobility blocking, Web session pick-up, Web session forwarding and so-on.

Services available at the client: content sharing, session handoff and stream media to a call.

Contributions: We created identities in Web browsers and a new social networking service for Web share, session transfer and multimedia

sharing among peers.

Dave and I have published two papers in the IEEE WCNC 2009 andWEBIST 2009. The third paper has just been accepted at the IEEENTMS, and it will be presented in December.

Curriculum at the Univ. Of Technology

For a NationaI Diploma, course offered at the Universities of Technology include:

- Information Systems- Development Software- Systems Software- Technical Programming

At a conventional University that offers a Bachelor's degree, courses offeredinclude:

- Information Systems- Database Systems- Systems Development- Commercial Programming - I. T. Applications

Curriculum at the Univ. Of Technology

For a NationaI Diploma, course offered at the Universities of Technology include:

- Information Systems- Development Software- Systems Software- Technical Programming

At a conventional University that offers a Bachelor's degree, courses offeredinclude:

- Information Systems- Database Systems- Systems Development- Commercial Programming - I. T. Applications

A Univ. in the US:- Introduction to Information Systems- Fundamentals of Business Information Technologies- Fundamentals of Application Programming- Business Data Communications- Database Management- Systems Analysis and Design

Tools at the Research Labs

Having attended a number of local conferences and presentations in South Africa, I have a fair idea of tools used in some of the labs.

In my lab. (Communication Research Group Lab.), we use many OSS packages, such as the OpenIMSCore, NS 2 and various telephony application libraries.

Open Source Products developed in our lab Open Source Packages used

UCT IMS CLIENT (http://uctimsclient.berlios.de/)

GTK, ExoSIP

TransferHTTP Extension (http://transferhttp.mozdev.org/)

Mozilla, PJSIP

Problems Encountered by Students

Finding it difficult to implement what they proposed.- An example is a friend I met when I started my Web extension

project. He had no clue of how to implement his project, which

required him hacking a Web browser. He is yet to complete his M.Sc. - Another could not extend the Netbeans IDE.

A colleague of mine had earlier asked me to take an easy way out in my work.

In the Univ. Of Tech, some students would like to participate in the Open Source Projects, but they do not know where to start.

It would be very difficult for the ND students to grasp, owing to how the curriculum is structured.

Our efforts at the Univ. & Research Labs

Presentations on the Mozilla Projects and Community

October 2008http://picasaweb.google.com/micadeyeye/MozillaCommunityAndProjects1

Our efforts at the Univ. & Research Labs

Presentations on the Mozilla Projects and Community

September 2009http://picasaweb.google.com/micadeyeye/MozillaCommunityAndProjects2

Our efforts at the Univ. & Research Labs

Presentations on the Mozilla Projects and Community

September 2009http://picasaweb.google.com/micadeyeye/MozillaCommunityAndProjects2

My efforts at the Univ. & Research Labs

Getting students involved in my research workExamples are:

Developing the Windows version of the TransferHTTP extension Building Firefox on Linux and Windows

Extending some FOSS packages. Examples are integrating an XDMS or DB into some of the Mobicents converged applications and extendingthe PJSIP libraries to support video.

How can the FOSS Communities help?

The PG Students We could help PG students in their research work through presentations,

workshops and the likes. Getting to know that the Mozilla visits Univ. in the US is awesome. We look to forward to it in Africa, and we wouldalso want other FOSS organizations to do the same.

They need to know what is happening at the FOSS labs.

The University of Technologies In the Univ. Of Tech, the FOSS development curriculum could be

introduced at the Bachelor's Degree level at the Univ. Of Tech.

As a lecturer said, using open source in the research labs is based on personal interests.

There are very few OSS communities (UCT LEG, UWC FSIU) in the South African Universities, and most of them are inactive.

Although we have the required skill sets, Open Source Education in South Africa is yet to be explored.

Conclusions