Prominent Open Data evangelist and Open Source veteran Pia Waugh will bring Open Software to a new generation this week, launching a new open source software development group for university and high school students.
QUT's Open Source Group will launch and commence recruitment at the Queensland University of Technology Science and Engineering Centre, on Tuesday 11 June at 6:00pm.
Open source software is based on sharing of code and technologies under an open licence, providing a platform for people to collaborate and develop new ideas and systems, sharing the results so that others can benefit in their turn.
Associate Professor Jim Hogan, from QUT's School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, says that even if people don't know open source software by name, they interact with it on a daily basis.
"Well known open source software includes the Linux operating system, the Apache web server which underpins most of the world's web sites, as well as jQuery, a Javascript library also used by a vast number of websites.
"Without open source software, the Web as we know it would fall apart, and open source is becoming increasingly important across the industry, even to those whose main business is selling proprietary software."
Some of Dr Hogan's former students approached him to start the open source group, to encourage the development of new software and data sharing, to form a community of tech-savvy people to contribute to open projects.
The QUT based group - which has received significant industry support from Microsoft, Red Hat Asia Pacific, and Brisbane-based enterprise company, Technology One - will commence from July with regular technical gatherings, an industry speaker series, and ongoing mentoring at the university.
"Each of our partners has a firm commitment to open source projects, understanding the model of community driven projects operating hand-in-hand with commercial services and products," Dr Hogan said.
"They are interested in open source because they live to build software, and their interest is ongoing because of the value these projects bring to their work."
QUT computer science students, high school students with an interest in technology, and recent alumni from similar courses are expected to apply.
Technologies will range across the spectrum of programming languages and frameworks, with students already committing to projects in Python, C# and javaScript.
Initial open source projects for ongoing development include:
Glycogen - a Python-based learning system for the One Laptop Per Child Project, originally developed at QUT
Contributions to the d3js JavaScript visualisation libraries - used for data analysis
The Gnome KDE desktop for Linux systems
The .NET Bio libraries for bioinformatics - state-of-the-art libraries for genome analysis and exploration under the Windows environment.
Participants will choose a project of interest, allocate the time they would like to spend on it, where appropriate align the work with a project for academic credit, and showcase their work publicly to potential employers and collaborators alike.
Further information - Associate Professor Jim Hogan, QUT, j.hogan@qut.edu.au
Media contact: Rose Trapnell, QUT media team leader, 07 3138 2361 or 0407 585 901 rose.trapnell@qut.edu.au
