This is just for your info. I have put together a little proposal for an open-source tutorial for AMIA 2000. This won't happen unless the proposal is accepted, of course, but at least the speakers are all willing and enthusiastic. The body of the proposal is attached in html format, so it should be readable to most of you. Danl JohnsonTitle: Title
How Open-Source Development Really Works
Abstract:
Open-source development is successful because of particular tools and techniques that permit and anhance distributed development, not just because software is placed in the public domain.
If you want to play hop-scotch, it's not enough to draw numbered squares on the sidewalk: you have to interest others in playing and teach them the rules.
This tutorial provides attendees with knowledge of the resources, standards, and philosophy of the GNU/Linux open-source development community. Its purpose is to enable participants in the medical informatics community to understand how this development paradigm might be migrated into our own community. A mixture of basic, intermediate, and advanced content can be expected, and this tutorial is expected to be of greatest use to the experienced developer who is interested in using or participating in open-source software design.
This tutorial consists of three presentations:
Presentation 1: How to Survive and Thrive Economically with Open Source:
The experiences of Mozilla and Zero-Knowledge Systems, Inc. illustrate some of the real and false risks of open development. Open development can improve the development process, and there are benefits to the corporate entity of this development model, some of which are unexpected. The Mozilla project revealed some disparity of needs between Netscape and the Mozilla community; how these were resolved is discussed. The strategy of Zero-Knowledge Systems is to offer a commercial product under the rubrick of open source development, and their experience is reviewed. Controversies about open versus proprietary code and confidentiality of data are discussed in detail, and expectation versus experience is reviewed.
Presenter: Michael Shaver, Chief Software Officer, Zero-Knowledge Systems, Inc., and a founding developer of the Mozilla project.
Presentation 2: Converting to the Open-Source Development Paradigm:
This presentation recapitulates the experience of high-energy physicists in migrating major work to open-source. This presentation reviews the decision-making process and the implementation techniques that enabled experimental physicists to successfully convert their software development paradigm from Fortran to GNU/Linux and C++, and details of frustrations, the benefits and the limitations of conversion.
Presenter: Timothy Smith, head of software development at MIT's Bates Laboratory for Nuclear Studies.
Presentation 3: Tools and Programming Standards.
How large software projects have been successfully developed in the open-source arena. Covers the basic tools and toolkits used to build most Open Source projects, including compilers and interpreters; source code maintenance tools; dependency management tools; portability toolkits; system libraries; graphical libraries; communication protocols and protocol libraries; database standards, libraries, and tools; packaging and package maintenance tools; and documentation tools.
Presenter: Michael K. Johnson, software developer, Red Hat, Inc., co-author of Linux Application Development, past editor, Linux Journal, first organizer of the Linux Documentation Project.
Note to reviewers:
The presenters are willing to provide either a half-day or a full-day tutorial. There is enough material for a full-day tutorial; we recommend in a full-day session that it be half talks (am) and half (pm) a panel forum for pragmatic questions from attendees.
The speakers have committed for November 5th, 2000; if the 4th works better for AMIA, I can re-negotiate.
The budget for tutorials may not cover three speakers; I have privately offered to the speakers to cover their costs not met by the AMIA stipends and other reimbursement.
