Getting more specific...

Last week we chose to contribute to the Sugar Labs project, but that is like giving your address as North America.  There are tons of things to choose from, and we have all decided to work on the Math4 project.  This is still general because within Math4 there are a lot of projects.  We've narrowed that down to three, presently, and they all seem really cool.  All of them are math-centered video games with very simplistic graphics (all of them are 2-d games).  It's exciting because I think that we will all do well to contribute.  We've signed up for the mailing list, but now we need to contact the people from the individual projects.  All of their emails are on the wiki, so it should not be hard.  They all also have very welcoming words on the wiki that makes anyone feel comfortable contacting them to help contribute to the game: they are not just asking for senior software engineers.  I'm really excited for this project, I think presently "PacMath" would be my favorite project... I always like the original PacMan game, so I think that would be fun.  They have lots of specific tasks that need to be accomplished. 

I read in more detail "The Cathedral and the Bazaar."  I think that this is going to be a helpful resource, not just in this class, but also in Operating Systems where we are going to need to use Linux extensively.  At present, I am pretty "anti-Linux," but this made me feel a little more interested in getting to learn it better.  I am hoping however that we will be able to work on our Sugar Labs Project in our "native" operating systems.  Here are some interesting quotes that I found from "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" that might be useful to me now or in the future:

"If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource."

"Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around."

"To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you."

"Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging."

"Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse)."

"When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor."

Project chosen...

After presenting our top three choices to the class, we have finalized what project we will be working on.  Our group along with another will be working on sugar labs.  There are tons of projects to work on, but our group presently plans to work on Math4.  It is a project that creates fun activities for fourth grade students to learn math. There are opportunities to help with current projects or even start our own.... our group has not yet decided what we are going to do.  I am really excited about this project, especially since it is for a really good cause.  I joined the IRC chat called "sugar newbies."  There are capabilities for chatting, although there were not many members on.  There are quite a few other IRC channels as well for things such as specific development questions.  I also joined the mailing list, and our group created a team email account so that it would be easier for us to share emails concerning this project.  I briefly skimmed over Cathedral and the bazaar, and it seems to be a useful resource for people beginning in the open source world.  I liked the statement saying that once you got bored with a project, you have the responsibility to pass it off to somebody else.  Do your civic duties.  I will read in more detail and comment on my next blog.

Day Two

Today we were looking into what FOSS projects we would work on for this semester.  The main one that jumped out at me and the rest of four's company was OLPC (one laptop per child).  This project seeks to make sure that every child has a laptop.  They have created a cheat and durable laptop that uses solar power so that kids in even the most remote regions would be able to have access to a computer.  There are tons of possibilities in this project from creating educational activities, reporting bugs, helping with documentation, or even contributing to the user interface that runs on the laptop.  This project was primarily written in Python, which makes me feel confident that we would be able to look through the source code and know what is happening.  Not only would this be an exciting and fun project to work on, I like that it helps underprivileged children; it is definitely something I would  like to contribute to.

Sugarland is another possibility for a project that we could work on.  It ties into OLPC, but the focus on that would be the interface on the laptops.  This would be my second choice because I am really interested in user-interface design.  I think that it would be an interesting project to work on that we would be able to contribute to.  I would prefer OLPC where we would be able to create activities for children.

Our third choice is Open office for children.  We chose this because we are set on doing a project within the realm of education for children.  We have all used open office, so our familiarity makes us feel comfortable with this project.  We are looking forward to working on one of these projects, I really hope that we will be able to work on the OLPC project however, our group is very enthusiastic about it.

Day One

We did not waste any time on the first day of class.  We got straight into groups and began working on an introduction assignment.  I got a strong sense of deja vu as I looked around the classroom and saw nearly everyone from my software engineering class and had the same introduction assignment in front of me.  I am apart of the group four's company, and I am looking forward to working with them.  Now we need to just find a FOSS project to work on.  I learned from software engineering that this is an important step.  You can waste countless hours on a project only to find out that it is not within your capabilities.  I hope that we can find a somewhat simple software that we can get really familiar with so that we can really contribute to the project.  I would say that day one was encouraging, and I am interested to see what the class brings.