ApacheCon US 2009 Session

Teaching and Learning About Open Development

• Ross Gardler
• Thu, 05 November 2009 15:00
• No Materials Available

The management structure of open source software projects is unlike the management structures found in most workplaces. Similarly, the process of open source software development is unlike the process taught in almost all universities and colleges, or the processes practiced in many organisations. A newcomer to an open source project is faced with seemingly insurmountable barriers, including the need to engage openly with a wide community. Exposing your weaknesses to an unknown public body, and having those weaknesses recorded in public archives or indexed by search engines, is a scary prospect for even the most confident of developers. Even after this initial fear is conquered, a contributor must face the fear of exposing unfinished, and potentially buggy, code to peers for public review. In this presentation, Ross Gardler summarises his experiences as a Google Summer of Code administrator for Apache since 2005. He will present his experiences in the context of his role as manager of OSS Watch, an open source advisory service to the UK education sector. Ross will also look at various approaches to teaching open source. Finally, he will go on to suggest ways in which the mentoring model can be more widely applied, to ensure that open source projects are better equipped to guide newcomers in the art of open development.