Refresher Course at CSD Mumbai University.

Jan-14 2013

Presenter:

Amol A Sale

amol@joyoflinux.com

Open Source for academics.

Outline

What is Open Source?

Who runs open source projects?

Why open source?

Business models

Contributing to open source.

Why to contribute?

What benefit student or professional gets out of it?

Adopting Open Source in academics.

Resources

What is Open Source?

“The practice of providing open-source code for a

product; Open-source software in general; To make

open-source”

Free sharing of technological information like

cooking recipes have been shared since the

beginning of human culture. Sharing cooking recipe

does not mean sharing cooked food.

Why open source?

FLOSS potentially saves industry over 36% in software R&D investment that can result in increased profits or be more usefully spent in further innovation.

No code is good code, there is always scope for improvement and human limit may restrict the growth of your project, so open the source.

To make your code world class.

Open source software projects may offer a learning opportunity those students aren't getting in school.

The best run open source projects have real standards, and teams of experienced programmers.

WHO IS

DOING IT?

Source: Linux Kernel

Development

How Fast it is Going, Who is

Doing It,

What They are Doing, and Who

is Sponsoring It

A White Paper By The Linux

Foundation

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/

Source: Linux Kernel

Development

How Fast it is Going, Who is

Doing It,

What They are Doing, and Who

is Sponsoring It

A White Paper By The Linux

Foundation

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/

Why they contribute?

Companies like IBM, Intel, SGI, MIPS, Freescale, HP, etc. -- to ensure that Linux runs well on their hardware.

Distributors like Red Hat, Novell, and CentOS, Ubuntu have a clear interest in making Linux as capable as it can be.

Companies like Sony, Nokia, and Samsung ship Linux as a component of products like video cameras, television sets, and mobile telephones.

VMWare - built on Linux kernel.

Nvidia – Interested in Graphics business.

Intel – Processor family interest

Google – Run many Linux based servers in house.

Volkswagen?

Why do people contribute?

“Human beings have an inherent tendency to seek out

novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise their

capacities, to explore, and to learn.”

Daniel H. Pink (Author of DRiVE - What motivates us?)

Why students/we should contribute to

Open Source?

You get :

Good developers have always known that the way to improve is by reading well-written programs. Good FOSS projects in dynamic communities provide a wealth of examples for students to read, understand, and work on.

Chance to interact with world class software team.

Chance to read, modify or improve world class source code.

Learn from constructive feedback of mature, well-run FOSS project team

Learn project management.

Essential professional software development skills that are seldom well-taught in formal school settings.

Learning Communications and social skills.

Participation in FOSS projects can generate a very public portfolio of practical work. This beats a resume any day. It also makes it easier to show your previous work to a potential employer.

Business models

Open source software can be sold and used commercially.

Donations?

Saas? Iaas?

Though there are FOSS apps around developed by big companies, Open source does not always means free of cost.

You can charge/sell your software along with source code.

You can distribute it free and charge for Support.

Important: First understand the Licensing in depth and then go with business.

Examples

Canonical Ltd. offers Ubuntu for free, while they sell commercial technical support contracts.

Mozilla Foundation have a partnership with Google and other companies which provides revenue for inclusion of search engines in Mozilla Firefox.

MySQL is offered for free, but with the enterprise version includes support and additional features.

Novell offers openSUSE for free through the openSUSE Project, while selling SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE).

Red Hat offers the Fedora for free through the Fedora Project, while selling Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Oracle offers OpenOffice.org for free, while selling StarOffice.

So do you ...

use good quality FOSS every day?

like the freedom and openness of the Internet?

think that Internet content should remain free?

share stuff with your friends for free?

BUT

Did you know that all (a lot) of this stuff is based

on...

FOSS ?

You use Open Source Software every

day.

When you e-mail a document, pay your taxes online,

book an airline flight or do a search for a long lost

relative, you’ve just used open-source software.

Every startup has access to the same technology that

only large enterprises could afford in the past.

Business Models using Open Source?

Come up with a distinctive practical idea.

See if there is any work done towards it in open source projects.

If yes, See how can you adopt it and make it compatible with your idea?

If not, start a new open source project

Every tool is available there starting from kernel, filesystem to web server, open source social network platform find ways to adopt it to your idea.

CMS (Content Management Systems) – Drupal, Wordpress, Open Cart, MediaWiki and many more.

Open Source consultancy to SMEs or individuals.

Open source training.

Hosted Services – Cloud, Virtualization based infrastructure.

Saas or Iaas

HOW OPEN SOURCE CAN

PLAY BIG ROLE IN

ACADEMICS?

Open educational resources

So how to get started?

OSS Watch is an advisory committee which provides comprehensive analyses of the legal, technical, and economic aspects of open source software implementation in the higher education sector.

http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/

Open educational resources are online resources that provide free applications and learning materials for academic institutions. includes complete course materials, modules, journals, reference materials. These resources can be modified and redistributed.

http://www.oercommons.org/

Open source curriculum (OSC)

Open source curriculum (OSC)

MIT OpenCourseWare http://ocw.mit.edu/

Stanford Online's internal platform, designed to be an open platform for online learning and research. http://class2go.stanford.edu/

http://www.curriki.org/

Khan Academy https://www.khanacademy.org/

Connexions: a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. Anyone may view or contribute:

http://cnx.org/

Why Use Open Source in Education?

The absence of a license fee.

Flexibility.

Service continuity.

Continuous improvement.

Learning by using.

Building lab infrastructure using open source software

helps in optimizing budget and involving students

make them industry ready.

Operating Systems.

Linux as preferred open source operating system.

Choose one distro which suits your needs.

Edubuntu, openSUSE:Education-Li-f-e etc.

Contains many good educational software and

support for education environments. Like LTSP

Knoscience: specifically for higher education.

http://knosciences.tuxfamily.org/doku.php?id=knoscie

nces:software_list

Computer Programming tools

Open source IDE’s like Eclipse, Netbeans.

Databases MySQL, PGSQL, NoSQL

Programming languages: PHP, Perl, Python

Compilers and debuggers: gcc, gdb

Virtualization environments: virtualbox, xen, qemu.

Wireshark network analysis tool.

Open Source Infrastructure tools

Apache web server.

Hadoop simulations.

Eucalyptus cloud setup.

EXT file systems

Linux volume managers.

Mail servers.

Iptable secured networks.

And many more

Content Management Systems

Wiki Media Wiki

Blog wordpress

Intranet sites. Drupal.

OPEN SOURCE LEARNING

MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Moodle

Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS),

also known as a Learning Management System

(LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

It is a Free web application that educators can use

to create effective online learning sites.

Most widely used LMS.

LAMP makes it easy to setup and use.

https://moodle.org/

.LRN

Pronounced “dot learn,” .LRN is a popular tool developed at MIT and based on AOLserver and OpenACS.

Originally developed at MIT, .LRN is used worldwide by over half a million users in higher education, government, non-profit.

It supports online learning and other interactive digital systems. Originally designed to meet the needs of universities, it was later implemented in schools, organizations, and corporations. Its flexible framework allows easy customization.

Other popular LMS

Bodington. http://http://bodington.org/

Claroline. http://www.claroline.net/

Dokeos. http://www.dokeos.com/

Sakai http://www.sakaiproject.org

ATutor http://www.atutor.ca

OLAT http://www.olat.org

Case Study: Open Source Education Lab

http://osel.oregonstate.edu

Oregon State University have started this initiative to

help Students involved in Free and Open Source

Software (FOSS).

LEARNING BY

CONTRIBUTING

Get started.

Choose an area of your interest.

Do your homework -- mailing list(s), a wiki, code repository; things done in the past, things discussed on mailing list.

"Be familiar with coding style, contribution practices, community email etiquette, and copyright assignment practices for the project you are contributing to."

Testing kernel for different QA tests.

Reviewing code -- any competent developer appreciates more eyes on the code.

Documentation as a comments inside source code

Submitting patches.

And you know what? It never ends ...

"Most of all, have fun! Don't be discouraged by strong personalities in the community and try to understand other people’s perspectives."

Linux Kernel

Mailing Lists

The Linux Kernel Archives http://kernel.org/

The linuxkernel mailing list archive https://lkml.org/

Subscriptions http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Other important Links

Linux foundation http://www.linuxfoundation.org/

Linux kernel interactive map http://www.makelinux.net/kernel_map

Kernel documentation http://kernel.org/doc/

Linux Kernel Newbie's http://kernelnewbies.org/

TLDP http://tldp.org/

Ubuntu

Development

Write and package new software or fix bugs in existing software. Your technical skills can make a real difference.

Design

Put your creativity to work by improving the look and feel of Ubuntu. Help design graphics, backgrounds or themes for the next release.

Bug squad

Help make Ubuntueven better by working with bug reports to ensure they're clear, complete and easy to reproduce. Anyone can help!

Documentation

Help produce official documentation, share the solution to a problem, or check, proof and test other documents for accuracy.

Ubuntu contd…

Support

Share your technical know-how with other users by joining email and discussion lists or Internet relay chat (IRC) channels.

Testing

Ubuntureleases new versions every six months so we need lots of testers who can report or confirm problems.

UbuntuBrainstorm

Everyone can participate in the Brainstorm website. It's full of ideas on how to improve Ubuntu.

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

Wikipedia

Among top five most visited website.

Runs on donations and contributions from around world.

Everyone should contribute because it’s cool to share your knowledge. And it’s a lot of fun.

Most friendly open source project!

Helps you to become good at writing world class articles.

How to ?

Create an account

Learn some basic markup syntax and go. It’s that simple.

What can be contributed?

Articles, Images, Audio, modifications to existing articles. Participate in talk pages, it’s a lot of fun.

Mozilla

Mozilla foundation hosts many cool and successful projects.

Firefox is one of the most downloaded software on earth.

Contribution opportunities:

Localization

Testing and Quality Assurance

Coding

Visual Design

http://www.mozilla.org/contribute/

Other cool projects

Xenhttp://www.xen.org/community/

KVMhttp://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Code

Android

Gnome

KDE

File systems like ext, zfs, raiserfs.

Content management systems like drupal, wordpress.

This list is so big and never ending:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open_source_software_packages

Some cool Open Source Internship,

Fellowship projects

Shuttleworth Foundation 1 yr

Fellowship Program

http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/funding/fellowship-programme/

Does not have strictly defined areas of funding

Suggested areas

Communication and Analytical Skills in Education

Intellectual Property Rights

Open and Collaborative Educational Resources

Telecommunications

Open Philanthropy

Open Science

work from where you are.

Internship at the FSF

http://www.fsf.org/volunteer/internships

FSF sponsors the GNU project

Chance to work with team who writes gcc, gdb,

emacsand many cool projects.

Work remotely

Unpaid but value of experience counts.

Google summer of code

Offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects.

accepted students are paired with a mentor[s] from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits.

more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.

http://code.google.com/soc/

http://code.google.com/opensource

Open Source Online Repositories

Google Project Hosting https://code.google.com

Github https://github.com/

Sourceforge http://sourceforge.net/

Open source hardware

Information about the hardware is easily discerned.

Hardware design (i.e. mechanical

drawings, schematics, bills of material, PCB layout

data, HDL source code and integrated circuit layout

data), in addition to the software that drives the

hardware, are all released with the FOSS

approach.

http://www.ohwr.org/projects

http://www.openhardware.de/

Thank You