The Humanitarian FOSS Project

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Contents 1 Project Motivation 2 Project Goals: Can these motivations be channeled to 3 Main Pedagogical Activities 4 Main Financial Support 5 Why the Open Source Model? 6 Current Development Projects (hfoss.org)

Project Motivation

• Lets help our neighbors! (David Patterson, Nov. 2005, post-Katrina)
• Join the open source movement! (David Patterson, Mar. 2006)

Project Goals: Can these motivations be channeled to

• Help revitalize undergraduate computing education.
• Build free open source software (FOSS) that serves the community.

Main Pedagogical Activities

• Regular credit courses: Intro and advanced level.
• Independent studies: Individual students and/or small groups.
• Summer internship program (10 interns for summer 2008).

Main Financial Support

• A collaborative, community building (CB) grant from the NSF CPATH Program.
• SoftHum: Grant from NSF CCLI Program
• A collaborative Mellon Foundation Grant.

Why the Open Source Model?

• Development Process: Transparent, based on merit and peer review.
• Licenses: Free as in speech, not (necessarily) as in beer.
• Distribution model: No restriction on derived works.
• Pedagogical Virtues: Creativity, self-initiative, cooperation.

Current Development Projects (hfoss.org)

• International Projects
  • Sahana (Sri Lanka) -- Disaster Recovery IT System
  • OpenMRS (Rwanda) -- Open Medical Record System
• Neighborhood and Community Projects
  • VMOSS (Hartford, CT) -- Portable Volunteer Management System
  • Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford (Hartford, CT) -- Application Tracking System (University of Hartford)
  • The Ronald McDonald House (Brunswick ME) -- Volunteer Management and Scheduling System (Bowdoin College)
• Independent Student Projects
  • The Touchscreen Toolkit (Giovanni Capalbo, Trinity College)
  • The CAPTCHA Verification Plugin (Turner Hayes, Wesleyan University)
  • Darien CT EMS Scheduling Calendar (Stephen Bloom and Stephen Kates, Trinity College)
  • The H-FOSS Directory (Ernel Wint and Alex Marcus, Connecticut College)

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