Increase in efficiency of Free software projects through information management

Goal of the thesis

The goal of the semester thesis is:

The definition of a (light-weight) process enhancement, which is suitable for the Open Source development model.
The installation of the defined process enhancement in a represential project of the F/OSS community
Testing or rather capturing the qualitative advantages (as well as eventual disadvantages) in the studied project.
Finally the process enhancement should be made available as a reusable tool for other F/OSS projects

The following considerations have already been done:

The extension or enhancement of the existing process should have no or minimal impact on the work of the developers
The enhancement and the resulting process has to fit to the development philosophy of F/OSS
The starting-point will be human deficiencies like forgetfulness and lack of organisation, as well as attributes of the communication channels (e.g. decisions made in long mailing-list threads are hardly to comprehend for non-involved persons), which should be lowered by the work of a to-be defined role and possible tool usage
For example the enhancements of the process should help to
- making decision-making processes and their results comprehensible and
- delivering newbies means for rapid orientation inside the project
The pre-formulated solution is „informations management“

Bonus-Task (if interested in publication):

The mediation with at GNU Classpath - The resulting implementation of the mediation idea.
The Mediation Manual - A document describing how to perform the mediation activities for a project.
GNU Classpath - The project studied for this thesis
- 1st article about GNU Classpath development (German)
- 2nd article about GNU Classpath development (German)

If you are interested in this project and would like to know more, feel free to contact:

SE.ThesisFOSSIM moved from SE.ThesisFOSSInformationManagement on 29 Mar 2005 - 12:28 by oezbekPCPOOL/MI/FU-BERLIN.DE - put it back