Collaborative Environments in Software Engineering Teaching: A FLOSS Approach

Abstract

Open development has emerged as a method for creating versatile and complex products through free collaboration of individuals. This free collaboration gathers globally distributed teams. Similarly, it is common today to view businesses and other human organisations as ecosystems, where several participating companies and organisations cooperate and compete together. As an example, Free/Libre Open Source Software ( FLOSS) development is one area where community driven development provides a plausible platform for both development of products and establishing a software ecosystem where a set of businesses contribute their own innovations. Equally, open and informal learning environments and open innovation platforms are also gaining ground. While such initiatives are not limited to any specific area, they typically offer a technological, legal, social, and economic framework for development, relying always on people as open development would not exist without the active participation of them. This paper explores the participation of master students in FLOSS projects, while merging two different settings of learning: formal and open/informal education.