Background

Though open source software existed before the World-Wide-Web was created, the Web and Internet connectivity have been essential for the blossoming of free and open source software (called "FOSS") in recent years. FOSS projects need to be available on the Web in order to gain attention. There are a growing number of websites (often called "forges") that provide a home and visibility to FOSS projects (although many of the biggest projects are hosted on their own servers and websites). These online directories of open source projects often provide not only the source, but also statistics about the project, such as number of contributors.

Directions

Part 1 - SourceForge

Source Forge used to be one of the main source forges, but GitHub is gaining in popularity, because it allows sharing code in any form. GitHub allows someone to post code for other software developers and hackers to pick up and modify, whereas SourceForge is mostly for finnished projects. In this activity you will explore projects in SourceForge to gain an understanding of the key characteristics of a FOSS project.

Do the following:

  1. Go to: http://sourceforge.net/
  2. Use the Search feature in the center of the screen to view applications in an area of interest to you (e.g., gaming, sports, music, computing, etc.).
  3. How many projects are there in this category?
  4. How many different kinds of projects are there?
  5. How many different programming languages are used to write software in this category?
  6. List the top four programming languages used to write programs in this category.
  7. How many of the projects in this category are written in the programming language of your choice?
  8. Identify the meaning of each of the statuses below:
    1. Inactive
    2. Mature
    3. Production/Stable
    4. Beta
    5. Alpha
    6. Pre-Alpha
    7. Planning
  9. Compare two projects in this category that have two different statuses. Describe the differences between the statuses.
  10. Which projects are the most used? How do you know?
  11. Pick a project in your category. Answer the questions below:
    1. What does it do?
    2. What programming language is the project written in?
    3. Who is likely to use the project? How do you know this?
    4. When was the most recent change made to the project?
    5. How active is the project? How can you tell?
    6. How many committers does the project have?
    7. Would you use the project? Why or why not?
  12. Look for projects that have a humanitarian purpose. That is, projects for which the primary purpose is to provide some social benefit such as economic development, disaster relief, health care, ecology. Examples include Mifos, Sahana, and OpenMRS.
  13. Find several additional examples of humanitarian FOSS projects.
  14. Pick one humanitarian FOSS and look at the data available about it.
  15. How would you decide whether it was worth using?
  16. How would you decide whether it was worth contributing to as an IT professional?

Part 2 - OpenHUB

Comparison of Gnome Web (formerly Epiphany), Firefox and K-Meleon using OpenHUB. In this activity, you’ll explore some of the development characteristics of web browsers including the number of developers and the programming languages used in each.

Explore Gnome Web:

  1. Go to: https://www.openhub.net/
  2. In the upper-most search space, enter: Epiphany
  3. Click on the icon for Gnome Web (Epiphany).
  4. What is the main programming language used in Gnome Web?
  5. How many lines of code does Gnome Web have?
  6. Click on "User & Contributor Locations" (lower right side of screen). List some of the locations of the developers.
  7. Go back to the main Gnome Web page. Click on the "Languages" link. What other languages is Gnome Web written in?
  8. What language has the second highest number of lines of code?
  9. Of the programming languages used in Gnome Web, which language is the most highly commented?
  10. Click on the “Contributors” link under "SCM Data" menu.
  11. How long have the top three contributors been involved in the project?

Explore Firefox:

  1. Go back to the Open HUB main page: https://www.openhub.net
  2. In the upper-most search space, enter: Firefox
  3. Click on the Firefox logo.
  4. What is the main programming language used in Firefox?
  5. How many lines of code does Firefox have?
  6. Click on "User & Contributor Locations" (lower right side of screen). List some of the locations of the developers.
  7. Go back to the main Firefox page. Click on the "Languages" link. What other languages is Firefox written in?
  8. What language has the second highest number of lines of code?
  9. Of the programming languages used in Firefox, which language is the most highly commented?
  10. Click on the “Contributors” link under "SCM Data" menu.
  11. How long have the top three contributors been involved in the project?

Comparison of Gnome Web, Firefox and K-Meleon

  1. Go back to the Open HUB main page: https://www.openhub.net
  2. Click on the "Projects menu" on that page.
  3. In the left sidebar about halfway down, find the “Compare Projects” section and click the Compare button.
  4. Enter Gnome Web (Epiphany) in the first column to select Gnome Web browser.
  5. Once the information of Gnome Web is displayed, enter Mozilla Firefox in the second column.
  6. Repeat using K-Meleon in the third column.
  7. Which project has more developers?
  8. Which project is older?
  9. Which project has the largest number of developers in the past 12 months?
  10. Which project has the larger number of lines of code?

This assignment is based on a project found at http://foss2serve.org/index.php/FOSS_Field_Trip_Activity_V1.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Int'l License.