tOSSad OSS2006 Workshop

tOSSad Workshop on Governmental, Educational, Usability, and Legal Issues towards Open Source Software Adoption in an enlarged Europe

Hosted by  The Second International Conference on Open Source Systems  June 10th 2006, Grand Hotel, Como, Italy

Main goals

The main objective of this tOSSad workshop at OSS 2006 meeting is to integrate, and to discuss already formed methodologies, strategies, skills and technologies in F/OSS domain in order to help governmental bodies, educational institutions and SMEs to share research results, establish synergies, build partnerships and innovate in an enlarged Europe.

tOSSad

tOSSad ( www.tOSSad.org ) is an EU FP6 project funded under IST-3. It aims at improving the outcomes of the F/OSS communities throughout Europe through supporting the coordination and networking of these communities by means of state-of-the-art studies, national program initiations, usability cases, curriculum development and implementation of collaborative information portal and web based groupware. By conducting these actions on an international European level, with inclusion of the ACC and NMS countries the tOSSad project acts for a general acceptance and coordinated boost of F/OSS development. The project consortium consists of 19 partner institutes from 15 different EU countries.

Detailed description

The workshop will be organized around parallel and/or serial sub-tracks covering themes that are listed below. The technical nature of the workshop will consist of presentations of technical reports and/or scientific papers; case analysis; demonstrations followed by interactive discussions.

Although relatively focused studies from tOSSad project are planned to compose a part of the workshop, primarily, contributions from other related EU/non-EU projects, researchers, and practitioners are expected.

Submitted papers, reports, case analysis or proposal for demonstrations will be collected by related conveners and will be reviewed by the programme committee. Accepted papers will be presented at the workshop and  will be published as part of tOSSad2006 proceedings.

The workshop encourages submissions on all topics listed under following sub-themes:

Sub-theme 1- Legal, Administrative and Financial Weaknesses/Barriers, and Possible Solutions

Convenor(s): Manon van Leeuwen & Bülent Özel

Focus:

The sub-theme accepts technical papers, case analysis, and proposals adressing following issues:

• What are the legal barriers?
  

• How to comply with IT Laws while developing, and procuring F/OSS solutions within public bodies?

• What are the effects of software piracy on F/OSS adoptions and acceptance?

• What kind of Administrative and Finacial Weaknesses hinder F/OSS adoptions?

Sub-theme 2- F/OSS in National Programmes

Convenor(s):  Bülent Özel & Brian Restall

Focus:

Authors are invited to submit reports or technical papers on success stories, possible policies and strategies towards a wider adoption of F/OSS technologies within public administrations, NGOs, SMEs, and educational institutes.

Sub-theme 3- F/OSS Usability

Convenor(s): Sandra Frings & Görkem Çetin

Focus:

This subtheme is intended for practitioners, software developers, HCI specialists and project managers who want to deploy user centered design process of a distributed and/or F/OSS project. The sub-theme encourages submissions on following topics:

• Continuous and sustainable usability in F/OSS projects

• Distributed and remote usability in F/OSS projects 

• Differences between internet-led or vendor-led usability 

• Usability and F/OSS development process 

• F/OSS usability tests and reports 

• Out of box experience for F/OSS products

• Usable GUI design

• Empirical work related to F/OSS usability

• Opportunities for proactive and supportive users 

• Localization, accessibility and internationalization

• Evaluation of usability

• Application scenarios and demos

Sub-theme 4- F/OSS Curriculum Development and Best F/OSS Training and Learning Methods

Convenor(s): Michele Marchesi & Graham Attwell

Focus:

The sub-theme consists of two different tracks:

1. Open tOSSad Project F/OSS Curriculum Development Workpackage workshop where invited talks will be delivered and results of tOSSad Workpackage will be discussed.

2. Presentations of submitted and reviewed papers adressing following issues:
   Case analysis and demonstrations on successful F/OSS training and learning methodologies and systemsPossibile frameworks while developing F/OSS curricula for K12s, NGOs, youth empowerment centers, university graduate and post graduate studiesF/OSS e-learning methodologies
   

Target audiance

Workshop is targeted but not limited to the following audiance:

• F/OSS policy makers,

• F/OSS practitioners,

• F/OSS business enterpreneurs/proffesionals,

• F/OSS trainers and teachers,

• Researchers,

• F/OSS users.