Free and Open Source Software Development COMP8440

Course overview

Assumed knowledge & required skills

Students will get more out of this course if they are already competent in at least one programming language. It will also help if they have some experience with Linux or Unix-like operating systems.

Course description

This course provides an overview of the historical and modern context and operation of free and open source software (FOSS) communities and associated software projects. The practical objective of the course is to teach students how they can begin to participate in a FOSS project in order to contribute to and improve aspects of the software that they feel are wrong.

Students will learn some important FOSS tools and techniques for contributing to projects and how to set up their own FOSS projects.

Course content

Please see http://cs.anu.edu.au/students/comp8440/

Rationale

See http://cs.anu.edu.au/students/comp8440/COMP8440_flyer.pdf

Topics

• Free and Open Source software
• Legal issues surrounding free software
• Collaborative development techniques
• Software development and maintainence

Technical skills

• Building and installing free software
• Contributing patches and bug reports
• Leading a free software project
• Choosing a free software license
• Participating in collaborative development

Textbooks

No prescibed text, but recommended reading is available here: http://cs.anu.edu.au/students/comp8440/lectures/course_introduction.pdf

Workload

Intensive mode of delivery will comprise 5 full days of: 18 hours of lectures, 18 hours of lecture/labs, 4 hours of tutorials