DPS909 and OSD600 Fall 2014 Notes

Week 1

• Course introduction
• Question: What is Open Source? Why work on Open Source as a student?
  • I studied business and programming, not English. I still can't find a job
  • The Secret to Hiring Great Developers
  • https://twitter.com/jeresig/status/33968704983138304
  • Facebook open source in 2014
  • Facebook on Github
• Success in this course requires:
  • Willingness to be lost and not panic
  • Curiosity
  • Being driven, persistence
  • Willingness to ask for help
  • Willingness to give others help
  • Independent learning
  • Doing more, much more, than the bare minimum
• What are Seneca and Seneca students capable of accomplishing? Some examples
  • Audio Data API, Pointerlock, Gamepad API
    • https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/03/18/mozilla-and-unity-bring-unity-game-engine-to-webgl/
    • https://developer.mozilla.org/ms/demos/detail/bananabread
  • WebVTT
    • Example

• Intro to open source
  • Proprietary Licenses, EULAs
    • Microsoft
    • Apple, Richard Dreyfuss reads the iTunes EULA
    • Skype
  • Open Licenses
    • BSD
    • GPL
    • LGPL
    • MIT
    • Apache
    • MPL

• TODO
  • Create an account on this wiki for yourself (note: requires manual creation)
  • Add your info to the Fall 2014 Open Source Students page.
  • Create a blog (wordpress or blogspot or whatever) and create a feed category or tag called "open source"
  • Read the Blog Guidelines for instructions on how to use your blog in the course
  • Add your blog feed and info to the Open Source@Seneca Planet List so that it appears in the OpenSource@Seneca Planet
  • Pick one Closed and one Open license/EULA, and read them from start to finish. Pick 3 things that struck you, blog about it and your reactions to the readings this week.
  • Begin learning how to use IRC for communication. We'll cover this in detail next week, but it's better to get started early.

Week 2

• Open/Closed Licenses
  • Discussion of findings in license readings from week 1
  • Case Study: Markdown and open licensing, open standards, forking, blogging, and Twitter
    • Markdown 1.0.1 (2004)
    • Markdown's license
    • Markdown is used everywhere, by everyone
    • calling out a maintainer (2009)
    • call for standardization of Markdown (2012)
    • failed attempt to standardize (2012)
    • podcast of Gruber discussing Markdown
    • a second attempt, Standard Markdown (2014)
    • Standard Markdown rejected
    • the difficulty with standardizing
    • naming fallout
    • a third attempt, Common Markdown (2014)
    • ...and finally http://commonmark.org
    • Winer's open email to Gruber, with parallels to RSS/Atom

• Discussion of Class Projects: enabling browser based cloud sharing
  • Filer - https://github.com/js-platform/filer
  • MakeDrive - https://github.com/mozilla/makedrive
  • Brackets - http://brackets.io/
  • Nimble - https://github.com/mozilla/nimble.webmaker.org
  • Appmaker - https://github.com/mozilla-appmaker/appmaker
  • Mobile Appmaker - https://github.com/mozillafordevelopment/mobile-appmaker/

• Release 0.1
  • Option 1 (for those new to open source):
    • Implement du in Filer
    • You will learn git, github, JavaScript, node.js, npm, Filer, code review
    • You must fix the bug yourself and have it reviewed by another student *and* review another student's implementation (i.e., do a pull request against another student's fork, and vice versa)
  • Option 2 (for those with more experience):
    • Find and fix a bug in one of the projects listed above which is of an equal size to Option 1
    • Releases 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4 will be like Option 2 for everyone

• TODO
  • Sign-up for a case study and begin researching and immersing yourself - 2014 Open Source Project Case Study
  • Reading for Wednesday's class: The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Please be prepared to discuss next class.
  • Figure out which option you will do for Release 0.1 and begin working on it.
  • Sign-up for an Open Source Case Study
  • Write an introductory blog post about the case study project you chose, and the project that you will be researching.