Textbook:
    Producing Open Source Software                                                  
    How to Run a Successful Free Software Project                                   

    By Karl Fogel
    October 2005 

    ISBN 10: 0-596-00759-0
    ISBN 13: 9780596007591

Overview:                                     
    Students will use the semester to learn how open source software is 
    developed in terms of its process as a cognitive unit of evolving   
    software. They will use real world development tools such as a version
    control system, bug tracker (ticketing system), mailing list, as well as
    open source IDE's or programming text editors, open source compilers (or
    interpreters depending on the chosen language for implementation),      
    documentation generation tools will also be used for both the overview  
    of software usage and the API for the code base, we will also use a wiki for
    public access to the documentation, an irc channel is also a potential means
    of communication as this ia quite common for development discussions.       

Course work:
    The students will start the semester with lecture, the lecture will
    cover topics out of the text book in order to gain a grasp on how the 
    process as a whole happens. The lecture portion will be generally fast 
    paced as most of the topics can be covered quickly in order to move on to
    the development portion.                                                 

    The development portion will start roughly 2-3 weeks into the course and
    will begin either with a fresh slate or pick up where the previous      
    semester left off in terms of bug fixing, enhancements, etc. Key points of a
    good software project will be enforced such as code style, modularity,      
    and potentially a design pattern or two depending on the direction of the   
    software project.                                                           

    Once the development cycle has begun, students will be given assignments
    in form of either a module to implement or a required number of commits to
    the version repository in both code and documentation form with a base line
    for an acceptable commit (in order to avoid several one line commits just to
    "get the grade"). Exams will still be given over content from the text book 
    as well as course lecture will continue in this fashion (in order to further
    refine topics, but the requirements to start development will be covered    
    early on).                                                                  

    The idea for the software project is to team up with the DF track majors and
    create some sort of a DF tool which can be decided upon before class starts 
    by the Faculty or can be decided in class by a combination of students. This
    software project will have a user base (The DF Tools course) and I would    
    like to encourage the DF Tools students to comment on the tool during their
    time in their course and either post to the mailing list, file a ticket to
    request a feature enhancement, or report a bug.

    Infrastructure:
        - Version Control System:   Mercurial or Git
        - Bug/Ticking System:       Bugzilla or Trac
        - Wiki:                     MoinMoin or Trac (built in)
        - Editory/IDE:              Anything with syntax highlighting
            --  The rest will be enforced with code style standards
        - Programming Languages:    C or Java
            --  Both are already taught at SHSU and their respective courses
                could be pre-req's to this one, therefore no additional need for
                teaching a language in this course.
            --  C would be preferred as this language is "taught less" and would
                allow the students to branch out slightly more. Also would
                provide interaction with gcc and gdb.
            --  Java would have the advantage over C as it is cross platform and
                we would not have to force an OS/platform on the students as I
                think change of OS might be a bit much to add to all of the
                material already being covered in the course. (C can be cross
                platform, but it ends up limiting the language as most of the
                highly capable libraries for it are platform specific)