[Gllug] Request for help in OSS/Free Software survey

[Christian Reis]

Hello Tim,

    I'm writing to request your help with my MSc research project. I'm a
    brazilian software engineer doing a dissertation on Open Source
    software engineering processes, and as the final part of it, I'm
    conducting a survey of the major Open Source projects.

    The research depends on the respondant's knowledge of the project
    and a bit of its history, so I'm asking project leaders personally to
    answer for their own project; specifically in this case for 
    Tamber. If you can also answer for others that you lead or know well, 
    of course, it will also be very appreciated.

    The survey has 12 questions, and shouldn't take more than 15 minutes to
    answer (we did some testing and most people finish in about 7). It's
    online at:

        http://www.async.com.br/~kiko/fsp/

    If you would like someone else to answer, please send me an email
    address and I'll ask them directly. If you would rather the survey
    came in through email, let me know too and I'll arrange.

    The survey is usable on any browser (including text browsers like
    lynx and w3m), and it contains *no* graphics, so it should be quite
    fast. If you use Mozilla or another DOM-compliant browser the help
    boxes show in the same page, which is a bit nicer than the default
    behaviour. Apart from that it shouldn't be too much of a bother to
    fill it out, and it will really help us get valid research findings.

    If you want to know more about the survey, there is a FAQ on the
    site, and I am available to answer any questions. A short text
    follows describing it.

    This is the only email I will send you with a request, and if you
    don't have the time, kindly ignore it (use "D" in mutt or pine).

    Thanks if you do take the time, too. :-)

About the Research

    The MSc project is an attempt to characterize open source/free
    software projects with respect to their software processes. This means
    how the project organizes, how code is designed, produced and kept track
    of, and other issues relating to the project's approach to development.

    The qualification paper (in portuguese, i'm afraid) is available at 
    http://www.async.com.br/~kiko/quali/ - Google does a [rather poor,
    and my surname isn't Kings] translation of it if you enter the URL
    in the search box.

    The results of this survey will be made publically available, and
    the report will be also published in English, to make sure that the
    largest number of people and organizations can benefit from the
    data. If you are interested I can offer data in any format that's
    considered convenient.

About me

    I'm an MSc student at ICMC USP, Brazil, and my MSc work involves
    describing and characterizing software process models for open
    source projects. As part of my research, I've done a study of a
    number of projects, and this year I've published an article on the
    Mozilla Software Process at the OSS Workshop in Newcastle, UK. It's
    available online at http://www.async.com.br/~kiko/papers.html

    I'm also a member of the Kiwi, Bugzilla and PyGTK development teams,
    and I work mainly on an open source project to develop a free point
    of sales and retail management software, called Stoq.

Take care,
--
Christian Reis, Senior Engineer, Async Open Source, Brazil.
http://async.com.br/~kiko/ | [+55 16] 261 2331 | NMFL

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