New version of Libresoft-tools’ tutorial

The version 0.2 of the Libresoft-tools’ tutorial has been released for the new edition of the master on free software.

Even when the web site is in Spanish (we are trying to translate it as soon as possible), all the materials are publicly available and licensed under creative commons share alike.

This new version includes updated information about CVSAnalY (which migrated to Git repository).

As further work, I want to improve the Bicho’s section and include a new one related to Guilty.

Wow, Paypal security

For a long time I didn’t use Paypal, but I ordered three different things from three different sellers in ebay. All in less than few minutes, and after exactly 5 minutes I received a call, directly in my contact paypal phone, to ask me about all of this and if this was really ordered by me.

Of course, I told them that I ordered it and they just apologized then for annoying me: “this is only a security call”.

Most of the times I read things about bad behaviours, rude operators o whatever. Just now, I would like to tell everyone, “ei, Paypal really works well”.

OpenSE kickoff project meeting

OpenSE (an open participatory learning ecosystem for Software Engineering courses) is a Lifelong Learning/Erasmus Programme cooperation action for European HEIs which will explore the possibilities of new techniques in knowledge creation and knowledge sharing processes in a framework for Software Engineering teaching.

Thanks to Teo

“Why are papers in top conferences very boring (these days)?”

The answer here

What I have learnt today: Synesthesia

Synesthesia:

is a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway

Thanks to jwz

Spanish Research and Development area

If you are not from Spain, lucky, but if you live here and you are a PhD student or someone close to the scientific field (anyone) you know that the current government is trying to decrease the amount of money for research and development activities (even in Spain!!!).

So, this is a good opportunity to go abroad to look for some good job…

Ciencia Española

Mozilla Camp in Prague

I finally spent some fantastic days with the Mozilla community, learning some good stuff such as Prism or Weave!.

The first one aims to create like a direct link in your desktop for those applications found in the web (software as services?) like Google Calendar. Just forget your web browser!. The main issue is that it seems that it does not work in Linux systems …

On the other hand, we have Weave. I personally think that it’s a fantastic idea. Just imagine you have your mobile phone, your laptop and your desktop, but in all of these you use Firefox and you are always moaning like “I really have a fantastic bookmark on my laptop, but I do not have it here “. Weave is your friend . They are working on a tool to centralize all the bookmarks (and some other stuff such as add-ons configuration for instance…), so you just need to install this plug-in and you will get all the info stored in the cloud!. Now you can share and update your bookmarks among your devices!

Attending the Eu MozCamp 2009

So, here I am attending the 2009 EU MozCamp invited by the Mozilla Foundation (thanks guys!). I have seen some students from the MMTC which took place in June.

So far, Saturday and Sunday will be the great days, let’s see!

Paper accepted at Metrikon 09!

As a result of the QualOSS project, a new paper has been accepted in the Metrikon 2009 congress. This kind of conferences are more industrial related, but this is a great opportunity to show another kind of community (different from academic ones) the kind of things that QualOSS do.

Authors: Martín Soto, Daniel Izquierdo-Cortazar, Marcus Ciolkowski

Title: Measuring the Performance of Open Source Development Communities: The QualOSS Approach

Abstract:
Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) has an increasing importance for the software industry. Similar to traditional (closed) software acquisition, F/OSS acquisition requires an assessment of whether its quality is sufficient for the intended purpose, and of whether the chances of being maintained and supported in the future, as well as of keeping certain quality standards over time, are sufficiently high. The first one of these aspects is strictly product related, and can be assessed using techniques that are not specific to F/OSS. The last two aspects, however, are related to the community developing the software, and require novel approaches to be evaluated properly. In this paper, we present an approach toward a comprehensive measurement
framework for F/OSS projects, developed in the EU project QualOSS. Although this approach takes into account product quality as well as process maturity and sustainability of the underlying F/OSS community, we concentrate here on its community-related aspects. After describing our quality model and assessment techniques in some detail, we close with a description of our ongoing evaluation effort and a discussion of lessons learned.

Third, fourth and fifth days!

Well, after an exhausted week (just because of the beers or because of the contents) the Madrid Mozilla Technologies Course has come to the end.

We are supposed to know how to create an extension from scratch (so so) and some other things, but for sure, I need to re-read the developer’s documentation.

Perhaps you don’t know, but we need to develop “something” on Mozilla technologies in order to pass the course. So far, a collegue and I have selected an extension which will allow to highlight, mark and some other actions to be performed on an HTML web page, in the same way as you do while you study.
So, the main goal is to provide enough tools to work on a digital text in the same way as you do on a physical book.

Let’s see how it’s going … I will try to add here all the steps to get this .

Bye bye!