Software Engineering Research Topic

[ahathaway]

I am a graduate student tasked with coming up with a research project for my software engineering course. I wanted to select a research topic that had to do with Open Source Software development. A few ideas I had were:
1. The development models of OSS.
2. The effectiveness and use of formal training of Open Source software developers.

The topic has to be very focused and has to do with Software Engineering. If anybody would like to throw out some ideas it would be great appreciated. Thank you.

[tgalati4]

I would spend some time reading Mark Shuttleworth's blog and if you don't have any new topics jump out then send him an email and see what he think's would be a good research topic.

[ahathaway]

Great suggestion. I already read his blog but never with an eye to sniff out research projects to perhaps I can go back and look through it.

[BrokenKingpin]

I would spend some time reading Mark Shuttleworth's blog and if you don't have any new topics jump out then send him an email and see what he think's would be a good research topic.
You should ask Linus Torvalds while you are at it. Hell, you could shoot Bill Gates and email, I am sure he would have some great topics for you as well!

[ahathaway]

So I have determined a SE topic.

Formal Training Within The Open Source Community

Is there any significance placed on formal software engineering training in the Open Source community?

Discuss the prevalence of trained software engineers within the Open Source community.

Discuss the ways in which software engineers are trained within the community.

Determine if there is an open source community that already benefits from the advantages of formal training or if the community pushes on without the need for formal training.

Let me know what you think.

[BrokenKingpin]

I am not sure I understand your chosen topic. Software developers go to school to get formally trained, regardless of weather they go on to work on proprietary software or open source software. I suppose some are self-taught (although you wouldn't technically be an engineer), but I don't see what this has to do with Open Source.

[ahathaway]

I am not sure I understand your chosen topic. Software developers go to school to get formally trained, regardless of weather they go on to work on proprietary software or open source software. I suppose some are self-taught (although you wouldn't technically be an engineer), but I don't see what this has to do with Open Source.

Why would you not be an engineer if you were self taught? I am sure there are people out there that are self taught that are considered software engineers. I could be wrong and I am sure my research will show if I am. There is no test you pass or standard organization that grants you software engineer status so what is to stop companies from hiring someone as a software engineer that is self taught? Are you denying that there is a stigma out there from some proprietary software companies that open source developers are a bunch of free range hobbyists hacking together some software? BTW that is not my opinion and that is partially what I want to look into to disprove and I dont think you need formal training to disprove that.

[crush304]

how about something like
'open source software development methodologies and their influence on corporate software development'

[BrokenKingpin]

Why would you not be an engineer if you were self taught? I am sure there are people out there that are self taught that are considered software engineers. I could be wrong and I am sure my research will show if I am. There is no test you pass or standard organization that grants you software engineer status so what is to stop companies from hiring someone as a software engineer that is self taught? Are you denying that there is a stigma out there from some proprietary software companies that open source developers are a bunch of free range hobbyists hacking together some software? BTW that is not my opinion and that is partially what I want to look into to disprove and I dont think you need formal training to disprove that.
At least in Canada, to be a certified software engineer, you need a computer science degree from a university. Sure, a company can hire people for a software engineer job, but they are not certified engineers.

I was just saying a lot of the open source developers have computer science degrees and programming diplomas. My point is that regardless of being an open source developer, or a proprietary software developer (or both), I think the level of formal training is the same in a lot of cases. Sure there are a lot of hobby programmers that GPL their stuff, but it usually isn't something like Open Office.

I myself am a professional software developer, and I was not aware of any stigma on open source developers.

[phrostbyte]

I actually did my Software Engineering research topic on FOSS too. :) I'm not sure where it is though. :(