20091209-Open Source Software Foundry Tools and Services
Good afternoon everyone, welcome to Academia Sinica, my name is Lucien Lin, I am the Project Manager of this project. In the next ten to fifteen minutes, I will bring you a brief introduction of our project, Open Source Software Foundry.
Which also known as OSSF in acronym.
I will begin this talk with the history on why and for what purpose our project come into existence, then, the description of software development tools provided by our website will be presented to you. After that, I will explain the five major services of our project, including license consultation, E-newsletter, resource catalog, teaching materials, and various workshops and activities.
About the history, our project was established from 2003 till now. back to that time, some members in the parliament of our country(The Legislative Yuan) thought there should be some alternative schemes for software market to rectify the Microsoft monopoly situation in Taiwan, they made the administrative organs(The Executive Yuan) in Taiwan to support a collaborative plan between different organizations called “Taiwan National Open Source Software promotional plan”, OSSF is a sub-project of that plan from the very beginning, sponsored by the Industrial Development Bureau(under Ministry of Economic Affairs). In that time, our main mission was to establish a web-based software development platform, to extend the application of Open Source Software and to enhance the software research capability in Taiwan.
That is, in plain terms, the main established purpose of OSSF is to help train the domestic communities and talented people of Open Source Software in Taiwan. In a word, we promote Open Source Softwares, both in applying and in studying ways. For that reason, nowadays, the operating fund comes from the National Science Council and the Academia Sinica itself.
Back to the main mission from the year 2003, for fulfilling the established goal by the Industiral Development Bureau, we established a repository for developers called OpenFoundry. OpenFoundry is a web-based platform for Open Source Software development, like SourceForge, GitHub, and Google code. The framework of OpenFoundry is written in Ruby on Rails.
This is the main page of OpenFoundry.
It consisted several tools, including Request Tracker, Kwiki, Symba, CVS, and Subversion.
For coders and power users, they can discuss, edit, and manage their software projects on OpenFoundry. As for end-users, they can download software and report the suggestions through this platform.
On the OpenFoundry platform, there are many Open Source components have already been built by others, and released to the public. Users of OpenFoundry can have them combined into their software projects easily, only if they follow the license rules accompanying with these components.
By doing that, they don’t have to redesign the wheel,
They don’t have to redesign the engine,
They don’t have to redesign the whole car once again, they can just combine the already been made components into their own projects fast and efficiently.
Like this picture, they can climb straight forward to the destination by reusing and recombining Open Source components from others.
Moreover, Open Source also means source codes of these projects are open in the early stage. Anyone who is enthusiastic and diligent with these projects, could join the collaboration easily.
Briefly, Open Source makes people easily coding together, thus, with sufficient work partners, Open Source projects tend to have better performance than unopened ones.
But, as we all know that, Open Source is not limited in the software development method. Although development tools and coding method are the key parts to glue all the pieces together. Coding is bridging. Coding is combining. Coding is fusing possibilities. But only by the coding methods can't truly make an Open Source project turn to real success. There are still many give-away and take-back theories and licensing knowledge should be spreaded.
So, like what I mentioned earlier, our project promotes Open Source Software both in applying way and in studying way. That is, five major services were given to justify this definition. Besides the tools provided by the OpenFoundry website, there are also many other service-oriented works provided by the OSSF project, including Open Source licenses legal advisory services, Open Source Software biweekly newsletter, Open Source study-guiding resource catalog, Open Source learning materials, and we hold various activities and workshops related to Open Source Software in Taiwan every year.
Firstly, we provide consulting services about licensing models, case trace, commercial applications and governmental policies. All related information can be found in the website.
Secondly, Open Source Newsletter. Content of the newsletter includes the introduction of domestic and international technology on Open Source Software. There are two issues every month. And each issue comes with plain text and html version.
Thirdly, Open Source Resource Catalog. Under this catalog, we collects the website information of any organization and application related to Open Source Software. It provides users a basis to dig into the rich applications of Open Source Software.
Fourthly, we have collated teaching materials, briefs, technology documents, and research reports for people to download freely.
fifthly, we schedules several meetings upon open-source-software-related topics every year. All activity-related information is posted on the website of our project. Everyone is welcome to check out online or subscribe our newsletter to update this information automatically.
The OSSF project is consisted of people who are passionate about the spirit and development of Open Source Software. To achieve our annual goals, our jobs are divided into three categories: Technical Development team, most of them are software engineers specializing in Ruby on Rails and PHP, eight members, Outreach and Promotion team, the activity aspect of OSSF, four members, and License and Legal Consultation team, including Florence, Richard, and me, three members. All the fifteen members are under the supervisions of four Principal Investigators: Dr. Lee, Der-Tsai, Dr. Liu, Jane Win-Shih , Dr. Chuang, Tyng-Ruey, over there, and Dr. Hsiao, Ching-Teng.
To try out the tools provided by OpenFoundry or find out more service information in detail, you can just google the word OSSF or OpenFoundry in the internet, and the first searching result will be our official website.
This's the foundamental introduction of OSSF. Thank you for your patience and attention.
