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“
- Testing reusability by applying the process enhancement in other F/OSS projects
Results of the thesis
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
Contact
If you are interested in this project and would like to know more, feel free to contact: