Academic Involvement in Ubuntu

[Oliver Grawert]

hi,
Am Montag, den 29.11.2004, 21:48 +0900 schrieb Jan Morén:
> 1. The students are mainly meant to _learn_ something. No matter how
> important or fun a project is, if it consists of "gruntwork" from an
> academic standpoint it is not a good candidate. I suspect that porting
> an existing app from one toolkit to another probably would fall within
> this area. 
i havent studied, but i always thought a diploma thesis should also
produce some value, so its just a matter how you sell it to your
professor i guess, but i agree that just porting apps between toolkits
is not the thing to do for diplomas.... it doesnt smell like a "real"
research.....

> 2. Time is very limited. As mentioned, the theoretical time frame
> discussed is 3-6 months. But take startup time (approval of the project
> as creditworthy, for instance) and closing time (write up a report), as
> well as the inherent problems of students underestimating needed time
> and effort, and you may actually have only 2-4 months "real" time. And
> that is typically not full time either - other classes need to be taken,
> beer needs to be drunk and so on. Anything that requires a substantial
> investment in time and effort to learn just to be able to start on the
> project is thus probably out.
thats right, time may be limited, but i think there is also a community
in the play where you can get a reasonable amount of help if you
selected the right project (and gained some interest). i would see this
option rather as a advantage. who says you just have to do a software
development diploma with oss....there are so many other things you could
base your work on, imagine a sociological study about the adaption of
the "humanity to others" model in ubuntu.... a technical study about the
automated build process of the ubuntu packages..... the sociological
impacts of a good functioning community on software production... etc. i
think the list of topics that apply here are endless.

> 3. Participation is limited. Most (not all, of course) students will
> drop their project like a hot potato the moment the course credits roll
> in, even if it means leaving their code in the middle of writing an
> if-statement. Documentation and other externalia will typically be
> strictly limited to that needed to finish the course, and no more. It is
> not at all a given that other people will be able to pick up the pieces
> and continue in a meaningful way afterwards. If anyone else is to have
> use of the project afterwards, it probably needs to be fairly
> self-contained and be reasonably finished by the time it ends.
this is the part where i see the biggest advantage of oss....if you dont
work alone on it, someone will pick up the work and finish your
if-statement ;) so it doesnt matter if you completely drop it....but i
am assuming here also that the student is already a member of the
community, so he/she wouldnt really drop it out of sense of
responsibility towards the community.

i am probably a too utopistic dreamer here, but i wanted to write these
thoughts down anyhow. and i also wanted to point out that ubuntu by
definition is a bit more then just a collection of improvable linux
software.

ciao
	oli

-- 
got ubuntu ? -----------> GET UBUNTU !!!
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature
Size: 3106 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20041129/66d4eac8/attachment.bin>