Educational Experiences with F OSS Development Projects Helping the

Educational Experiences with F/OSS Development Projects: Helping the Inmates Take Over the Asylum Walt Scacchi Institute for Software Research University of California, Irvine, CA 92697 -3425 Wscacchi@ics. uci. edu http: //www. ics. uci. edu/~wscacchi 1

OSS Development Experiences • USC System Factory Project: 1981 -1990 – Domain: Large-scale software engineering – Developed and delivered advanced SE tools in >500 K SLOC, 30 K papers of documentation. – Educated ~2% of all CS M. S. and Ph. D. students in US during 1981 -1988. – Produced 8 CS Ph. D’s 2

OSS Development Experiences • USC ATRIUM Laboratory Project: 1993 -1998 – Domain: E-Commerce, E-Business, and Business Process Reengineering – Developed automated tools, techniques and processes for process-driven EC and EB intranets/extranets – Educated >250 MBA students – Results applied to Telecomm, Aerospace, IT, Health Care, Feature Film Production, and Military enterprises – Received about $2 M in external funding from enterprise sponsors 3

OSS Development Experiences • UCI Graduate School of Management: 1999 -2004 – Domain: Enterprise portals and content/course management systems – Studied and reverse engineered requirements, specs, and architecture of GSM’s EP/CMS – Prototyped and demonstrated >60 EP/CMS – Educated > 250 MBA students – Students received >$1 M in venture capital 4

OSS Development Experiences • UCI Institute for Software Research: 1999 -2005 – Domain: Free/OSSD projects in (academic) research or (commercial) development areas. – Four National Science Foundation grants for field study of OSSD processes, practices, and community dynamics – Producing growling knowledge base of fastest, best, and cheapest ways to develop F/OSS systems in different settings. – Funding at >$1. 5 M 5

New OSS Development Projects • Computer Game Research Grid: 2003 -2008 • Science Learning Games for Informal Science Education: 2005 -2006 • Computer Supported Cooperative Organizational Learning Environment (CSCOLE): 2005 -? • All projects are multi-disciplinary w/faculty and student participants. 6

Lessons Learned • OSSD encourages reinvention as a learning mode • Students will work hard to build software systems for domains they find intrinsically motivating. • Students benefit professionally from their participation in projects that have application outside of the university. • Faculty need to provide socio-technical leadership, and need to encourage students to work as a socio-technical interaction network • http: //www. isr. uci. edu/research-open-source. html 7