[FOSDEM] CfP: Research Room @ FOSDEM: Libre software as a matter of research

[Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona]

[Please, forward to interested people]

                         Call for Participation
     Research Room @ FOSDEM: Libre software as a matter of research



                   E pur si muove (And yet it moves)



             http://libresoft.urjc.es/Activities/fosdem2007



    Joint workshop on "libre software research meets libre software
                             developers", 

sponsored by the QUALOSS, SQO-OSS, QUALIPSO, FLOSSMETRICS and FLOSSWorld
                           EU-funded projects



The workshop will take place in the Research Room in the next FOSDEM, to
be held on Brussels next February 24th and 25th 2007.

Libre (free, open source) software development has been gaining
attention from the research community during the last years. Currently,
many research groups are focused on understanding, and trying to
improve, the practices, procedures and products of the libre software
development community. This research is starting to produce a new view
on many aspects of the classical software engineering paradigms. In
fact, if the lessons shown in most classical software engineering texts
were applied to almost any libre software development project, it should
be concluded that it was headed to failure. And yet it moves... Libre
software is showing a new way of organizing software development
projects, in forms that make success possible under circumstances
previously thought to be unmanageable.

In this context, the relationship between research groups focused on
understanding libre software, and software development groups actually
producing libre software, can be of great interest for both parties.
FOSDEM, probably the largest meeting point for libre software developers
in Europe, provides an opportunity for this contact and exchange of
ideas. The idea of the Research Room at FOSDEM is to explore the
opportunities of this exchange, and what happens when developers and
researchers are put together in the same (physical) space.

Therefore, we're asking for contributions both from researchers and
developers, on the following topics (the list is not exhaustive):

      * What developers feel could be useful from research on libre
        software 
      * Feedback from the developer community to researchers 
      * Experiences of developers and researchers working together 
      * Results of applying research methodologies and analysis to libre
        software projects 
      * Results (including expected results) of research projects
        studying libre software 
      * What can the research community offer to libre software
        development 
      * Methodologies and techniques that could be used to address
        specific problems in libre software development

Although academic presentations are welcome, other, more informal (and
maybe provocative) contributions are also encouraged. The main target is
to have a good collection of ideas and experiences to foster discussion
and interaction.

Those interested in contributing are invited to submit a short paper in
PDF format, summarizing the intended contents of the presentation
(probably two or three pages are enough, but no paper will be rejected
for being too long). It should provide enough information to let the
organizing committee decide on its appropriateness for the workshop, and
the potential interest for participants.

      * Deadline for submissions: January 22rd 2007 
      * Notification of acceptance: January 31st 2007 
      * Workshop dates: February 24th (afternoon) and 25th (morning)
        2007

Submissions should be sent to all three addresses below, by the
deadline:

      * Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona - jgb at gsyc.escet.urjc.es 
      * Israel Herraiz - herraiz at gsyc.escet.urjc.es 
      * Gregorio Robles - grex at gsyc.escet.urjc.es

Accepted papers will be published on-line, after letting authors provide
more complete versions, if they want.

Organizing committee (alphabetical order, tentative list)]:

      * Jean-Christophe Deprez (CETIC, Belgium) 
      * Roberto Di Cosmo (University of Paris VII, France) 
      * Rishab Ghosh (MERIT, Nederlands) 
      * Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain) 
      * Israel Herraiz (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain) 
      * Stefan Koch (Vienna University of Economics and Business
        Administration, Austria) 
      * Gregorio Robles (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain) 
      * Diomidis Spinellis (Athens University of Economics and Business,
        Greece) 
      * Martin Michlmayr (University of Cambridge, UK)

The Research Room at FOSDEM is sponsored by the following projects
(although the meeting is completely open to anyone interested):

      * FLOSSMETRICS 
      * QUALOSS 
      * SQO-OSS 
      * QUALIPSO 
      * FLOSSWORLD

All these projects are funded in part by the European Commission, under
the Information Society Technologies (IST) research programme of the
Sixth Framework Program. A list of the IST projects in the area of
Software Technologies is available from
http://cordis.europa.eu/ist/st/projects.htm