Increase in efficiency of Free software projects through information management

Goal of the thesis

The goal of the semester thesis is:

• The definition of a (light-weight) process enhancement, which is suitable for the Open Source development model.
• The installation of the defined process enhancement in a represential project of the F/OSS community
• Testing or rather capturing the qualitative advantages (as well as eventual disadvantages) in the studied project.
• Finally the process enhancement should be made available as a reusable tool for other F/OSS projects

The following considerations have already been done:

• The extension or enhancement of the existing process should have no or minimal impact on the work of the developers
• The enhancement and the resulting process has to fit to the development philosophy of F/OSS
• The starting-point will be human deficiencies like forgetfulness and lack of organisation, as well as attributes of the communication channels (e.g. decisions made in long mailing-list threads are hardly to comprehend for non-involved persons), which should be lowered by the work of a to-be defined role and possible tool usage
• For example the enhancements of the process should help to
  • making decision-making processes and their results comprehensible and
  • delivering newbies means for rapid orientation inside the project
• The pre-formulated solution is „informations management“

Bonus-Task (if interested in publication):

• Testing reusability by applying the process enhancement in other F/OSS projects

Results of the thesis

• Thesis
• Presentation
• Presentation Open Office

Additional Links

• The mediation with at GNU Classpath - The resulting implementation of the mediation idea.
• The Mediation Manual - A document describing how to perform the mediation activities for a project.
• GNU Classpath - The project studied for this thesis
  • 1st article about GNU Classpath development (German)
  • 2nd article about GNU Classpath development (German)

Contact

If you are interested in this project and would like to know more, feel free to contact:

• Robert Schuster
• Christopher Oezbek

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