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EU-Funded EDOS To Simplify Open Source Development
An anonymous reader writes "a consortium of European research institutions and open source software companies have paired up to manage the complexity of large scale, modular projects by establishing a program called EDOS, Environment for the Development and Distribution of Free Software. Planners intend to move away from centralized builds and storage to a distributed process, form a language-agnostic bug testing system and turn to theoretical computer science to safeguard dependencies."
Please don't tell me that it's funded my Microsoft...
I don't believe they really wintend to
It sounds like a good idea, and we all know that options and diversity is what open source and free software is all about. I just hope that they don't pour heaps of cash into something which gets bogged down by bureaucracy. The EU track record isn't exactly stellar in that regard.
.: Max Romantschuk
Is it really too much to ask for timothy et al to actually proofread everything before they post it?
When I first looked at the article, I was thinking "European Disk Operating System. Jesus, those Europeans have to have everything their own way. What next, AntarctiVMS?"
So, I suppose I should RTFA now out of respect for the poster. Heh. Heh heh.
*is run over by rotten tomatoes*
EDOFS?
"Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing."
14 comments and already slashdotted. Must be some kind of record.
IMNSHO, distributed revision control is something long past-due for wider adoption... be nice to see it used outside of Linus's BitKeeper adoption and the (reasonably large number of) projects using Arch.
The impact of distributed revision control is that someone doesn't need to be trusted with commit access to a repository owned by the maintainers to do revision-controlled work -- instead, they just make a branch inside an archive they control, and changes can be merged back and forth between that one, the "official" branch, and/or any other 3rd-party branches at-will. As a casual contributor to a large number of projects, I find this extremely useful -- I have my own revision-controlled archive containing only my changes, and I don't need to get the trust and/or approval of the project maintainers before getting started.
Personally, I like Arch, but it's not the only game in town -- Darcs, Monotone and SVK are all in the same problem space (within the Free camp), as well as BitKeeper (in the proprietary camp). I'd like to think that this is what these folks mean by distributed storage (as the revision control archive doesn't necessarily sit all in one place) -- the concept needs all the exposure I can get, so I don't need to go the $#%@ pain of maintaining my own branches (w/o assistance from my revision control tools) again!
The EU is the European Union. Switzerland, while being wholly a part of Europe, is not a member state of the European Union.
Time for an "Operation" that can promptly remove the open source projects and install a hand-picked long term contract. Just like the good old days.
They are coding for free!!!!!!
All they'll end up with is EDOS Linux, yet another distibution with it's own cultish following. We already have organisation. Debian. 3.4 million euros for the open source community will be nice though, it may pay some of the court costs for patent claims.
Environment for the Development and Distribution of Free Software
The fact that they got EDOS from that name boggles my mind. This acronym business is entirely out of hand, and this is the stupidest one by far, ignoring a proper noun and an adjective but including "of".
while they are at it. I have a job to turn a pile of ada into a compiling set of c++. I can just build and sort through the error messages to find out which WITH'ed or #INCLUDE'd files are missing or broken but its turned out faster to write a cascade of filters in AWK which build a report of dependencies as an HTML page. Any module is listed and each module referenced goes into a sublist. It generates anchors and HREFs to lead the way around the dependency tree and color codes the module names according to the availability of the module.
I hope they come up with a less confusing metaphore than Clear Case when they design the version control GUI.
The larger the development project, the more likely it has to incorporate reused code and code in more than one language so here's my salute to their good intentions...and good luck!
[they will need more than language neutrality: they need archtectural neutrality to encompass OO languages alongside scripting languages and procedural languages. and what about languages that support templating?]
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
If X is the new Y, and Y is "X is the new Y", solve for X.
must you?
I am HEOPQIJWOIJEN KASDASDADLLER AdfASFSDFSSFgewgtgregergergreg yu insnsitnKHAKJSHDKAJBHAKclod.
Have you read my blog? Neither have I.
now, there's a perfect example of a solution in search of a problem. and, if that's not enough for you, it seems its also designed by comittee. good god. well, lets wait and see. somehow I can't help but think it will use Z, that dream in formality that is a nightmare to anyone who actually tries to do something useful with it.
... i suppose this is one of the greatest things about open source: if someone comes up with the strangest idea, one that no one else thinks is even remotely useful, well, she|he gets to have a go and try it without wasting anyone else's time. can you imagine if this was a company or a research lab: "linus, old chap, can you stop faffing around with that kernel crap and come and do some Z with us."
call me a cynic...
soup
Roberto Di Cosmo of University of Paris 7 claims that theoretical computer science is particularly strong in France and that its formal methods can be used to manage complex dependencies to create an "integrated, coherent whole."
In different words, people in France are jumping onto the open source bandwagon in order to squeeze out another few years of funding for the same old stuff they have already been doing for 30 years.
If you want to read more about formal methods, look here and here. You can judge for yourself how much relevance you think this is going to have for FOSS. I think its chances are close to nil.
You should use a less noisy line for you internet access. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
If a total of 10 institutions (yes, I read TFA) "pair up", that means they divide into 5 groups. I know it would be way too much to expect timothy to actually come up with his own words, as opposed to pasting from the article, so I guess this commentary is directed at the original author.
"Environment for the Development and Distribution of Free Software" Sourceforge.
I might be mistaken, but basically what you're saying is that computer programmers should discard computer science methods as irrelevant? Including things like graphs and sorting algorithms, for example (which are studied using formal methods by computer scientists)?
Yes, you are mistaken. I'm all for the formal analysis of things like graphs and sorting algorithms, but that kind of analysis has little to do with "formal methods" as used by these people. "Formal methods", as used by these people, refers to one narrow and specific approach to software development (and one that hasn't had much success in practice).
The press release on their site.
decide to have "American English", drive on the wrong side of the road, refuse to sign treaties, or join the ICC, or adhere to international standards in any way, shape or form.
I read the fucking article. You are correct; I was wrong.
Did anybody else read the title and think they were going to devellop an alternative to MSDOS?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
The United States of America != America, either, but that's what people call it. Give it time, and I bet "Europe" will become the accepted name for the EU.
I have seen several forks of the project. I keep thinking there must be something not quite right with it if people keep forking it.
Maybe you could shed some light on this.
evil is as evil does
See our Freenix 2002 paper for one example of applying formal methods to open source development. Worked great for us!
Worked great for us!
Yes, and if you had used UML, code reviews, pair programming, a different programming language, or merely meditated over a copy of the source code for the same amount of time, it might have "worked" even better. We'll never know because you didn't do a controlled experiment. You didn't even quantify the effort it took you or validate the actual implementation, so we don't even have any data about what you did.
Supporting an approach to software development with anecdotal reports like yours is junk science; we might as well use astrology for picking the best software development methods. Until computer science starts taking the scientific method a little more seriously, it will remain stuck in the dark ages.
Woa, did anyone else read this and immediatly think of the Tunes project, possibly because they were browsing the site in another window? :)
A distributed modular system and a possibility for automated testing by specification is exactly one of the aspects they see required for their hypothesized 'ideal' operating system.
Check this link for a brief overview. These guys also mostly come from France and a theoretical computer science background.
I would just like to point out that someone has discovered my password and used it to post the above comment. I also want to point that I do not like knob cheese.
I'd put my signature here, but my pen scratches the screen...
guess they are not serious about...
... well... us humans. Elements or facets of abstraction physics include the actions of abstraction creation and use, such as defining a word to mean a more complex definition (word = definition, function-name = actions to take, etc.), Starting and Stopping (interfacing with) of an abstraction definition sequence, keeping track of where you are in the progress of abstraction sequence usage (moving from one abstraction to another), defining and changing "input from" direction, defining and changing "output to" direction, getting input to process (using variables or place holders to carry values), sequencially stepping thru abstraction/automation details (inherently includes optionally sending output), looking up the meaning of a word or symbol (abstraction) so to act upon or with it, identifing an abstraction or real item value so to act upon it, and putting constraints upon your abstraction lookups and identifications (when you look up a word in a dictionary you don't start at the beginning of the dictionary, but begin with the section that starts with the first letter then followed by the second, etc., and when you open a box with many items to stock, you identify each so as to know where to put it in stock.)
Physics of Abstraction (abstraction physics)
Abstraction enters the picture of computing with the representation of physical transistor switch positions of ON '1' and OFF '0' or what we call "Binary" notation. However, computers have far more transistor switches in them than we can keep up with in such a low level or first order abstract manner, so we create higher level abstractions in order to increase our productivity in programming computers. From Machine language to application interfaces that allow users to define some sequence of action into a word or button press (ie. record and playback macro) so to automate a task, we are working with abstractions that ultimately accesses the hardware transistor switches which in turn output to, or control some physical world hardware.
Programming is the act of automating some level of complexity, usually made up of simpler complexities, but done so in order to allow the user to use and reuse the complexity through a simplified interface. And this is a recursive act, building upon abstractions others have created that even our own created abstractions/automations might be used by another to further create more complex automations. In general, if we didn't build upon what those before us have done, we then would not advance at all, but rather be like any other mammal incapable of anything more than, at best, first level abstraction. But we are more, and as such have the natural human right and duty to advance in such a manner.
There is an identifiable and definable "physics of abstraction" (abstraction physics), an identification of what is required in order to make and use abstractions. Abstraction Physics is not exclusive to computing but constantly in use by
Abstraction Physics has yet to be established/recognized in a broad "common acceptance" manner, similiar to the difficulty in the acceptance of the hindu-arabic decimal system (which included the concept that nothing can have value - re: the Zero place holder). It took three hundred years (from inception) for the innovation of the now common decimal system to overcome the far more limited Roman Numeral system. (NOTE: mathmatics and the symbol sets used are also abstractions and therefor a subset of abstraction possibilities and certainly an application of abstraction physics.) Though the act of programming is still younger than many who apply it, we are technologically moving at a much faster rate of incorporating innovations and better understandings of reality. There is a physics to abstraction creation and use which can be used to model and create a non-patentable user friendly general use, and dynamic, automation (abstraction creation and usage) tool, that also allows for organized placement and access of abstractions i