WikiSym 2005 Workshop: Open Source Software Development with a Wiki

Logistics & Signup

• This workshop is part of WikiSym2005, http://www.wikisym.org/
• Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2005, 01:30pm-05:00pm, Dover Room
• This is an open workshop, anyone is welcome to participate, just drop in (consider listing your name at #KnownParticipants)

Abstract

Some open source communities started to use a wiki to organize their work. This workshop uses the TWiki project as a case study. The TWiki community is using their structured wiki since inception as the primary communication vehicle to brainstorm on ideas, track new features, track bugs, provide support and create documentation. Other open source communities using Wikis are invited to participate in the workshop to compare the emerging methodologies of wikis for open source software development.

Description

There are many online communities which deliberate and make decisions by using wiki software. As a case study, this workshop examines how wiki supports online deliberation in the TWiki software development community. A wiki is a natural fit for open source communities since wikis are virtual rooms where people with similar interests meet and converse. Open source communities are virtual by nature, and they often work by conventions. It is possible to support these conventions and processes with a structured wiki, where content is driven by wiki applications.

A wiki is a good vehicle to loosely organize discussion in a community. Content in a typical wiki grows in an organic and free manner. People create many hyperlinks to related content, which is a natural process with WikiWord links. This improves the browsing experience.

The workshop includes a live demo on the TWiki.org website showing how the TWiki developers communicate mainly through their Wiki. A workflow helps developers keep track of new features from brainstorming idea through finished implementation. Each feature is documented, discussed and status tracked on a page. When needed, on-line polling comes into play to take the pulse of community opinion about a particular feature. All the infrastructure helps keep the content organized and structured, e.g. a release dashboard can show the progress of the current release in real time.

The workshop also discusses wikis used in software companies. Internal software release processes evolve over time, some open source software methodologies get adopted. A structured wiki is a flexible tool supporting this trend. Web applications can be created to keep track software releases. Along with this, there is a need to integrate the wiki with existing enterprise applications, such as defect tracking systems and CM tools.

Facilitators

Peter Thoeny: Founder and original author of TWiki, the open source wiki for the Enterprise. He is managing the project for the last six years. A software developer with over 15 years experience, Peter is specializing in software architecture, user interface design and web technology. He graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, lived in Japan for 8 years working as an engineering manager for Denso building CASE tools, and has now been in the Silicon Valley for 6 years. He manages the Knowledge Engineering group at Wind River, which has a large TWiki deployment.

Colas Nahaboo: Colas has led a research team in User Interfaces technology at Bull in France, was involved in the X and W3C consortium, and is now the Architect of ILOG intranet, which has been designed around web technologies, and mainly TWiki. His current interests is in how enterprise intranets can take advantages of the usages and technologies developed on the internet, among which wiki play a central role.

-- PeterThoeny - 16 Oct 2005

Agenda

• Whats makes OSD different from commercial Dev?
• What are the cases where Wiki succeeded?
• What are the cases where Wiki failed?
• Stories:
  • TWiki.org
  • Chandler

Known Participants

Please add your name with interests here if you plan to participate. You need a TWiki.org account in order to the edit Codev web pages.

• PeterThoeny:
  • Learn how other OSS teams use a Wiki for software development
  • Help refine the software development methodology of the TWiki community
  • Find out if Wiki based OSS development methodologies can be applied to conventional software development
• ColasNahaboo:
  • OSD => non intranet (security, loads...)
  • OSD => motivatoion of programmers?
  • mixing wikis with other tool?
• LynnwoodBrown:
  • Improve TWiki dev process

Discussions

Three generations of dev methodologies used at TWiki.org

1. WebForm and TopicClassification based:
   • Used until CairoRelease
   • Real time progress report on spec, impl, doc
   • Clear defined workflow for features, bugs and docs
   • Automatic generation of feature set listed in TWikiHistory
   • Core-team bottleneck in accepting patches
   • Large feature set tracked in one feature topic (but visible in progress report
   • Progress report not always accurate
2. ChangeProposal / DEVELOP model based:
   • New in DakarRelease
   • Developer friendly, DEVELOP branch is community controlled sandbox
   • Well defined teamplate with motivation, description, documentation, examples, implementation, discussion (for consistent articulation of feature)
   • DocumentMode and ThreadMode in same change proposal topic
   • Roll-up of red-flags / OutstandingIssues
   • Scales well, broadens participation
   • Test cases increase quality
   • Difficult to integrate Cairo contributions into Dakar (due to large code rafactor)
   • DEVELOP branch and MAIN branch out of sync for many month (idea was to sync it very frequently)
   • HasPriority does not work well (due to lack of responsiveness of core and due to volunterial consentual nature of developers)
3. Bugs web based:
   • Separation of larger scale feature tracking and fine grained bug tracking
   • Small actionable items
   • Fine grained bug tracking
   • Became the dev tracking tool
   • Duality of ChangeProposal and Bugs
   • Details in form box does not work well (can't see diffs, can't use %COMMENT%)
   • Lost wikiness (crosslinking, Item123 in IRC has no meaning)