CoMETE is shining more and more

CoMETE is shining more and more

Didier COURTAUD & Judith BENZAKKI

[email protected] & [email protected] Conference 2012

CoMETE is shining more and more FoSSA 2012

1 sur 21 J.BENZAKKI & D. COURTAUD

Plan

Introduction

CoMETE

Evolutions

CoMETE side effects

Conclusion



IntroductionFossa Conference 2012



FOSS is everywhere

FOSS has spread into all computer applications and devices

Technical ones : Routers, Cloud servers, ...

Hidden ones : Set Top boxes, Car computers

Very well known ones : Smartphones

FOSS market becomes more and more important (INSEE France 2011)

The FOSS market is about 2,5 G€ ( 6 % of the total market )

21% of the companies use a Free OS and 43 % use Free Office Suite

FOSS is now used by everybody

SMEs

Public adminstrations

Big companiesFossa Conference 2012 1/12



FOSS and Education

There is an important lack of formations to FOSS technologies and ecosystems

New methodologies to develop software

New ways of collaboration

Universities must learn FOSS technologies

Important for the students

To study how to develop these softs in collaboration

To find jobs

Important for the University

A way to contribute to innovation

A way to attract students

Important for France

France is the first contributing country for FOSS in Europe

French engineers must be active in the development of major FOSSprojectsFossa Conference 2012 2/12





CoMETEFossa Conference 2012



The CoMETE project

In 2009, we created the CoMETE project to initialize a FOSS cursus

CoMETE stands for Course on Mozilla Education and Technology

The goals of the project were

To learn the students all the technologies and methods used by the MozillaFoundation to create their products in order

they can contribute to these products

they can use these technologies in the companies where they work

To create online educationnal ressourcesFossa Conference 2012 3/12



CoMETE contents

A theoretical course

Given by instructors of the Mozilla Foundation

Equivalent of one week spread over a month

A practical project

Real subjects given by the Mozilla community and by companies

40 hours / 3 Months

Managed as a real FOSS project

The student is the Project Lead

He/She is followed by a Project Referee from the Community and aProject Referee from the University

He/She manages his/her project

Creation of a blog and a wiki to explain what they develop and howand to communicate with other contributors

Regular milestones where they publish intermediate releasesFossa Conference 2012 4/12





Projects results and student first feedbacks

The project results are fairly good

Most of the projects are reusable that is someone else can finish the work

A few have failed to produce something that can be reused

But a few produced soft directy usable in FOSS products like Thunderbird orNightingale

The first feedbacks of the students

It is wonderful to develop for real software used by many people

People of the community are so gentle with us even if we are newbies

It is an exciting new way to develop software in cooperationFossa Conference 2012 5/12



EvolutionsFossa Conference 2012



Courses

First courses focused on technologies for making extensions to Firefox or Geckobased applications

But we want to stay in touch with the new developments of the Mozilla Foundation

That is why this year, we decided with the Mozilla Foundation to switch to WebApplications development

More user friendly for the students

But more ready to the market (FirefoxOS Market Place)

At the beginning, instructors were pure Mozilla employees

It is important for students to be instructed by professionnals

Nowadays, all the French Mozilla Community wants to help

Not yet in courses but greatly in projectsFossa Conference 2012 6/12



Projects

We began with the paradigm : one student = one project

To make the student responsible of his/her project

Even if cooperation was encouraged ( and taken into account in the finalevaluation ! )

But students claimed to work as a team

They are afraid to be alone against the whole community

The first level of help is always their colleagues

We have observed that they do not use IRC enough : they do not dare !

They want to investigate themselves in bigger projects

We also want

To propose longer projects : all over the year

To propose new projects more oriented to researchFossa Conference 2012 7/12



Projets ( II )

This year, we have organized the projects as follows

One project = A team of 2 to 3 students

The students make two projects : a Research one and a Web Application one

The two projects can be combined to make a longer project

The Mozilla community has greatly participated to the definition of the projects

List of projects

All the projects are managed with Git and Github

The evaluation is no more done through a paper report

It is directly done through the Github site of the projectFossa Conference 2012 8/12



CoMETE side effectsFossa Conference 2012



Mozilla Family

What we have observed during these three years :

After a shy beginning, Mozilla employees and contributors have come physically atthe University more often

to talk with the students

to help the students

to show and promote new developments of the Foundation ( we have seen thevery first version of Firefox OS )

Nowadays students feel comfortable to work with the Mozilla community becauseof this presence

They have the feeling to belong to the Mozilla FamilyFossa Conference 2012 9/12



Students

Introduction of this FOSS cursus has completely changed the vision of FOSS forstudents

Those who participate to the CoMETE project say they make a discovery andthat it changes the way they see the computer science

Those who know the existence of this cursus at the University want toparticipate in any manner

A student non-profit organization has been set up at the University to helpstudents install Linux and use FOSS

Students dare says they work on Linux and use FOSS for their daily job

Students from other Universities candidate for coming to Evry because of CoMETEFossa Conference 2012 10/12



ConclusionFossa Conference 2012



Conclusion

In the sky of FOSS, CoMETE is approching the Sun

The cursus is now well establish in the program of the MIAGE

More students are participating ( and will participate ) to the projects

The scope of the projects is enlarging to research

Other Universities ( and aspecially other MIAGE ) want to organize such acourse

FOSS spirit flows inside the student community

They do not hesitate to ask for FOSS solution for any problem

At any level, they ask me how to participate to FOSS projectsFossa Conference 2012 11/12



Questions

We will be pleased to answer all your questions

Judith BENZAKKI ( [email protected] )

Didier COURTAUD ( [email protected] )Fossa Conference 2012 12/12

