Course Information for TDT10 New Software Technology: COTS and Open Source Software

FYI: TDT10 will be heavily upgraded for Autumn 2010, and will furthermore constitute half of the revised PhD-level course DT8100 Open Source Software (prev. named DT8100 Object-Oriented Systems). The course will be taught as five informal colloquia (also five for DT8100) plus a final one to present student exercises. These colloquia will be held every 14 days and each lasting 3-4 hours (half for TDT10).

1. Semester: Autumn 2010 - 3.75 SP for TDT10, 7.5 SP (12 h/week) for DT8100.
2. Responsibles: førsteamanuensis II Parastoo Mohagheghi at SINTEF, assisted by postdoc Daniela S. Cruzes and professor Reidar Conradi.
   Relevant email addresses:
   • Parastoo Mohagheghi <parastoo@idi.ntnu.no>.
   • Daniela S. Cruzes <dcruzes@idi.ntnu.no>
   • Reidar Conradi <conradi@idi.ntnu.no>. (responsible in 2009; on sabbatical 2010/2011).
   • Jingyue Li <jingyue@idi.ntnu.no> (de-facto responsible in 2008).
   • Letizia Jaccheri <letizia@idi.ntnu.no> (responsible before 2008).
3. Goal of the course: To serve as an introduction to various topics that are related to COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) and OSS (Open Source Software) based software development:
   
   • What do we mean by OSS, COTS and open standards?
     
   • How the OSS communities are organized?
     
   • How to initiate an OSS project?
     
   • How to integrate COTS / OSS in commercial settings?
     
   • How to reuse and modernize legacy software?
     
   • How to assess industrial success - what has been learnt?
4. Syllabus: The course literature consists of articles from various journals, magazines and proceedings; see pensum list for syllabus (final per 16.11.2010).
5. Teaching approach: The course is taught through six (five for TDT10) colloquia in workshop-style, where the teachers and students (and practitioners on 11.11) present a topic, followed by e.g. group work and discussions. Thus, each student must present her/his share of the 10 curriculum topics, i.e. revise old and prepare new slides. Hint: start now with this.
   We suggest to use the complementary books or papers as a source for your presentation. All the books are available for consultation in our library.
6. When and Where: Thursdays, every other week at 12:15-16:00.
   Start on 26/08, then 09/09, 23/09, 07/10 (DT8100 only: 21/10), 11/11 (with industry and final discussion); all in room itv-054.
7. Student Background Form: http://www.idi.ntnu.no/emner/tdt10/forms/backgroundform.doc
8. Presentation Schedule for the course topics:
   • 1. Thursday 26/0:
     Parastoo et al.: Topic 1, The basic knowledge of open source and free software
     Parastoo et al.: Topic 2, OSS in perspective
   • 2. Thursday 09/09:
     student1 : Topic 3, Understanding OSS projects
     studentNN : Topic 4, (only DT8100) Research on OSS
   • 3. Thursday 23/09:
     student2 : Topic 5, Evaluating OSS projects
     student3 : Topic 5, Evaluating OSS projects
     studentNN : Topic 6, (only DT8100) Abstraction paradigms
   • 4. Thursday 07/10 (NB! moved to 21/10):
     student4 : Topic 7, How to use COTS / OSS in commercial settings?
     student5 : Topic 7, How to use COTS / OSS in commercial settings?
     studentNN : Topic 8, (only DT8100) How to use COTS and legacy software?
   • 5. Thursday 21/10: (only DT8100)
     studentNN : Topic 9, New research topics
     studentNN : Topic 10, Case studies
   • 6. Thursday 11/11:
     all : industrial experiences, presentation of student studies and summarizing the course.
   • 7. Exam 01 or 02 December: (pre-determined date at NTNU level)
     oral, ca. 20 minutes per candidate.
9. Slides from the presentations: -- see under syllabus above.
10. Students per 26. Aug. 2010:

        1           kristian.klette@ntnu.no; Topic 3
        2           Kosuri@stud.ntnu.no; Topic 5
        3           wasike@stud.ntnu.no; Topic 5
        4           yuanyu@stud.ntnu.n; Topic 7
        5           leitedeo@stud.ntnu.no; Topic 7
        
    

11. Exercises: Each student must also carry out and document (as an essay, report or paper) a small empirical study.
    Students may work alone or in pairs. There is totally 40 hours per exercise topic, including a writing a final report or paper, delivered by 19.11. This counts 1/3 of the total mark for the course - for either one or two students.

    Preliminary ideas for possible exercise topics - not complete list:

    1. Literature study on low/high quality of OSS.
    2. Literature study on selection processes when choosing an OSS component (often a class library).
    3. Literature study on Open Innovation vs. Intellectual Property Right (IPRs), cf. prof. Chesbrough's books on this and with help by f.aman. Alf Steinar Sætre, INDØK.
    4. Literature study on evolution of cooperative work roles and community success factors, seen from the "users" of some OSS.
    5. Literature study on success/failure criteria when "going open", seen from the community initiator (Nokia, Ez).
    6. Literature study on model-based development vs. OSS.
    7. ...
    8. "Simulation" of actual selection of OSS software, given a certain need/rqmnts.
    9. Analysis of the SourceForge.net portal: actual usage volume/pattern vs. defect and change rates, i.e. do the most-used components have few defects and a high change rate?
    10. Analysis of cooperation processes during OSS evolution - i.e. deciding what should be done on what, when and by whom. Try to analyze a few cases by looking at wiki discussions, transaction logs in SVN version database, RPC and email messages etc.
    11. ...
    12. Interviewing system integrators on requirements (re)negotiation and decision making, when the available OSS component do not quite fit the expected needs - adapt/relax own requirements or extend the OSS?
    13. Interview companies on their present use of OSS (repeated study).
    14. Interview companies like ConfirmIt, Ez and Nokia on business models.
    15. ...

        - reidar

FYI: Last year's (2009) course description: http://www.idi.ntnu.no/grupper/su/courses/tdt10/index-2009.html

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http://www.idi.ntnu.no/grupper/su/courses/tdt10/index.html