SEMINAR
Best Practice in the Use and Development of Free and Open Source Software
3. Case study:

Part 2/Holger:

Slides:


1. personal background 

   - worked in gaming companies, banks and car companies for
     several years
   - studied computer science 
   - left well paid job and went into open-source scenes (2001)
   - various project involvements, started PyPy 2003 by
     inviting people to the first "sprint"

2. What makes Open Source communities like Python work: the people factor

	- collaborative - driven by interest 
	- communication - quite transparent to everyone involved 
	- email / IRC / version-control 
	- organization - rather informal 

3. technical production factors 

- automated test driven development
- specific expertise/special interest 
- version control (Subversion)
- releases

4. Typical aspects of the Python community?

	- lively community
	- lots of different python implementation projects
	- good contactsbetween the projects
	- maybe less fragmented than other OSS communities?

5. PyPy: the vision

- founders came from the Python community
- "sprints" were the inital factor
- what is PyPy/Python - one of the five most used programming
  languages today 
- grass root approach
	

6. OSS and EU funding: PyPy as a case study

- driven by partially EU funded and non-EU funded parties 
- focus on avoiding friction and turning PyPy into a long 
  term project
- IBM or Sun have done similarly challenging projects
  in more time and with more funding 
- yet not found completely satisfying "funding" 
  interactions with communities. 

7. PyPy technical status 

- three public releases in 2005, well received by the
  community 
- core deliverables fullfilled
- contributors add different directions 

8. PyPy: It's all about communication ... 
- pypy-sync meetings, 30 minutes IRC 
- day-to-day IRC discussions
- "this week in PyPy" 
- mailing lists: pypy-svn/eu-tracking tracks code and document changes 
- around 20000 visitors per month on website
- lots of blogs and pypy-dev (developer/researcher list) 
- 300-500 people across the world following the project 

9. all good and well but the main thing are: sprints 
- one-week intense work-meetings with one break day
- EU and non-EU researchers/developers get together 
- daily planning sessions 
- pair programming 
- evolving and adapting to more attendants 
- organisational/management tasks happen also on sprints 

10. next
- tackling research and technical goals (challenging!) 
- mid-term EU review planned for 20th january  
- looking into adjusting some work planning 
- increased dissemination, attending conferences (movie features?)
- start talking to and interact with commercial stakeholders