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What Makes an OSS Class Work?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the knowing-is-half-the-battle dept.

AnimalCoward writes "I teach a Continuing Education courses in OO programming at our local state university. An email was just sent out from the program director asking if any instructors were interested in developing, and teaching, a course in OSS. My question to the slashdot crowd is: What would you want to see in an OSS class? What should be included? Should I bring up all the discussions about liability and multiple OSS licenses? The request didn't state it, but from experience I believe the students would have a programming background ranging from only mainframes to C++ to those with some Java experience."

3 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. Fundementals by rovingeyes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    May be I am naive, but what else would you discuss in an OSS class except philosophy, legal, ethical and practicality arguments behind OSS? As far as I am concerned, it doesn't matter what programming language background the student has; because OSS class should not be about programming but every thing else surrounding it. For e.g. copyright law and how it relates to OSS, what are different OSS licenses and why are there so many? How can one create their own license and still maintain the spirit of OSS? And frankly the most important question this class should address is - WHY OSS?. I believe that between all the hoopla surrounding OSS, people have stopped asking the fundemental question.

    1. Re:Fundementals by chris+macura · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Lecture 1: OSS. What is it, where is it, and why is it.
      Lecture 2: Types of licenses, when to use which.
      Lecture 3: How to modify the licenses to allow for various common changes
      Lecture 4: Writing documentation: intro to man-pages (how to write them), doxygen, and latex
      Lecture 5: Writing readable code: commenting, dependencies, and the merits of white-space
      Lecture 6: How to use OSS in CSS (closed-source software), when it may/may not be done.
      Lecture 7: How to use versioning systems: CVS, SVN, etc.
      Lecture 8: -+
                    9: +-- Communication Skills: technical writing (not the bullshit they teach you in english 101)
                  10: -+
      Lecture 11: Survey of existing projects: why they succedded or failed
      Lecture 12: ditto

      That should cover it. I'm guessing a one/two credit course.

  2. Get Involved by Acius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you're talking to computer science students, it might be a good idea to have them research an OSS project they like and contribute something to it. I think a lot of students are pro-OSS in theory, but haven't taken the time to actually get their hands dirty with real, live code. If you require them to find and do some work on an existing project then they get valuable experience in researching what's out there, familiarizing themselves with existing community gathering points, etc.

    True, a lot of the code they contribute will suck, but that's nothing new. And if they keep trying, they'll get better at it.

    --
    Acius the unfamous