Infoworld has announced the winners of their “Bossie” Awards, their top OSS picks for desktop and mobile; there are a lot of SourceForge based projects in that list. Check them out:

Daniel Hinojosa.

In case you missed it and are into handset development, the Motorola team has posted the kernel for their Moto X phone on SourceForge.

Daniel Hinojosa.

Daniel Hinojosa.

SourceForge Community Manager

The group decided that getting the Python community ready for the upcoming Puerto Rico Tech Summit. what was most important need. The Tech Summit, 06/06/13, is sponsored by the Puerto Rican Government, and its CIO Giancarlos González. The first of it’s kind, the Tech Summit is a direct outreach to the Puerto Rico software development community to participate in access to governmental data; especially the Government Hackathon being held simultaneously with the summit.

The data being made available for the hackathon is a direct result of the MOU Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla signed on 2/28/13. Following President Barack Obama’s lead, Governor Garcia requested every government agency to make an API within 90 days.

Note: prPIG is kindly sponsored by the Internet Society, through their Community Grant program. We are deeply grateful for all of the support we have received so far, it has been well beyond our wildest expectations.

That’s all that’s changed. SourceForge is still dedicated to being your trusted source for Open Source, and will continue to provide free hosting for your Open Source project.

While you won’t see any changes to our services, or in our passion for Open Source, you may notice some changes to the site over the coming months. For example, in the right sidebar on project pages, you’ll see jobs in your area, provided by our partners Dice, the #1 technical job board website, with access to over 80,000 job listings around the world.

If you want to know more about our new corporate entity, you can read all about it at http://slashdotmedia.com/

Subject: Rigs of Rods is Project of the Month; Help Wanted; SourceForge is hiring; More …

Thanks for being part of the SourceForge community!

Rigs of Rods is Project of the Month

After four months of thoroughly practical POTMs, it’s time for something fun. November’s Project of the Month is Rigs of Rods. Rigs of Rods is a softbody physics simulator. To physicists, that means that it simulates the way that most objects, like, say, cars and trucks, are constructed of mass points, rather than being a single solid block. To the rest of us, that means that Rigs of Rods is a cool game where you can watch what happens when you crash those cars and trucks into things.

RoR has a huge user community around it (http://www.rigsofrods.com/) – people who are passionate about creating models of their favorite vehicles – including planes, boats, and trains, as well as cars and trucks. And because physics doesn’t lie, these vehicles behave just as they would in the real world. You can see some great videos of this on YouTube. Then, go download RoR and play with it yourself.

Looking forward, we have some great candidates on the ballot for the December Project of the Month. Please have a look at them, and go vote!

Help Wanted

The response to our “Help Wanted” newsletter sections, and blog posts has been overwhelming, with every one receiving responses from interested developers, as well as further email from other projects wanting to be added to the list.

We’re going to keep doing these things, but we recognize that the approach doesn’t scale to quite the level we need it to. So we’ve launched a Help Wanted forum where projects can look for developers, and developers can look for projects. You can still email us directly, if you prefer, but posting directly to that forum will let you engage with the conversation, and receive notifications when someone has responded.

SourceForge is Hiring

As you may remember, SourceForge recently acquired Dice. (They see it the other way around. It’s all a matter of perspective.) This month we’re using the Dice website to look for a new member of our team here at SourceForge.
We’re looking for a Systems Programmer/Analyst to work on the Slashdot, SourceForge, and Freecode sites. You can read all the details at Dice.com.

Upgrade to the new SourceForge

As we’ve mentioned in other mailings, we’re working towards retiring the old SourceForge platform, so that we’re not maintaining two platforms, and can move forward faster. In order to do this, we’re trying to get everyone migrated to the new platform this year.

If you’d like to move to the new platform on your own time, time’s running out. You can look through some of the new functionality at https://sourceforge.net/create/#feature-holder You can upgrade your project by clicking the “Upgrade” button at http://sourceforge.net/p/upgrade. If you’re concerned about the upgrade process, or about the functionality of the new platform, please don’t hesitate to contact us (communityteam@sourceforge.net) to discuss your concerns.

Top Twenty Growth

Every month we highlight projects that have seen substantial growth in the last month, as measured by downloads. This month, there’s a lot of familiar names and projects that have been with us a long time.

Ares Galaxy: Filesharing-Bittorrent p2p client http://sourceforge.net/projects/aresgalaxy

Azureus / Vuze: Vuze (formerly Azureus) is a P2P file sharing client using the bittorrent protocol. Search and download torrent files. Play, convert and transcode videos and music for playing on many devices such as PSP, TiVo, XBox, PS3, iTunes (iPhone, iPod, Apple TV). http://sourceforge.net/projects/azureus

DeSmuME: DeSmuME is a Nintendo DS emulator. http://sourceforge.net/projects/desmume

Classic Shell: Classic Shell adds some missing features to Windows 7 and Vista like a classic start menu, toolbar for Explorer and others. http://sourceforge.net/projects/classicshell

KompoZer: KompoZer is a wysiwyg HTML editor using the Mozilla Composer codebase. As Nvu’s development stopped in 2005, KompoZer fixes many bugs and adds a few useful features. http://sourceforge.net/projects/kompozer

SABnzbdPlus: The automatic usenet download tool http://sourceforge.net/projects/sabnzbdplus

FreeNAS: FreeNAS is an Open Source Storage Platform and supports sharing across Windows, Apple, and UNIX-like systems. It includes ZFS (high storage capacities and integrates file systems and volume management into a single piece of software) http://sourceforge.net/projects/freenas

UltraDefrag: Increase your system performance with this simple to use tool http://sourceforge.net/projects/ultradefrag

4k Download: Free video and audio download from YouTube and other services http://sourceforge.net/projects/four-k-download

Rigs of Rods: softbody physics simulation http://sourceforge.net/projects/rigsofrods

Orwell Dev-C++: A portable C/C++/C++11 IDE http://sourceforge.net/projects/orwelldevcpp

StarUML: StarUML is an open source project to develop fast, flexible, extensible, featureful, and freely-available UML/MDA platform running on Win32 platform. The goal is a compelling replacement of commercial UML tools such as RationalRose, Together and so on. http://sourceforge.net/projects/staruml

LOIC: Low Orbit Ion Cannon. The project just keeps and maintenances (bug fixing) the code written by the original author – Praetox, but is not associated or related with it. http://sourceforge.net/projects/loic

cm10i9100vsync: Yet another android ROM distribution. http://sourceforge.net/projects/cm10i9100vsync

PNotes: PNotes is light-weight, flexible, skinnable manager of virtual notes on your desktop. It supports multiple languages, individual note’s settings, transparency and scheduling. Absolutely portable as well – no traces in registry. http://sourceforge.net/projects/pnotes

eMule Plus: eMule Plus is an evolution of the original eMule project, created to improve its abilities and features, in both work efficiency and user interface. http://sourceforge.net/projects/emuleplus

DreaMule: It´s a ed2k file sharing client, done for easy of use and speed. http://sourceforge.net/projects/pootzmod

SugarCRM – commercial open source CRM: Affordable and easy to use customer relationship management http://sourceforge.net/projects/sugarcrm

PyQt: The GPL licensed Python bindings for the Qt application framework http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyqt

pseint: A tool for learning programming basis with a simple spanish pseudocode http://sourceforge.net/projects/pseint

Network Spoofer: Change websites on a Wifi network http://sourceforge.net/projects/netspoof

In Closing

As always, thanks for being part of the SourceForge community.

If you want more frequent updates than this newsletter, there’s several places where we make those updates. We’re on Twitter. We’re on Facebook. We’re on Google+. And if you follow the opensource and software Reddits, http://www.reddit.com/r/opensource and http://www.reddit.com/r/software respectively, you’ll see the occasional post from us there, too.

And, of course, there’s our blog – http://sf.net/blog – where we post longer articles about our projects and our platform.

Keep coding.

The SourceForge Community Team
communityteam@sourceforge.net

DICE HOLDINGS, INC. ACQUIRES ONLINE MEDIA BUSINESS FROM GEEKNET, INC.

SLASHDOT AND SOURCEFORGE SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASE REACH INTO GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY COMMUNITY

New York, NY and Fairfax, VA – September 18, 2012 – Dice Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: DHX), a leading provider of specialized career websites, and Geeknet, Inc. (Nasdaq: GKNT) today announced that Dice Holdings has acquired Geeknet’s online media business, including Slashdot and SourceForge.

“The acquisition of these premier technology sites fits squarely into our strategy of providing content and services that are important to tech professionals in their everyday work lives,” said Scot Melland, Chairman, President & CEO of Dice Holdings, Inc. “The SourceForge and Slashdot communities will enable our customers to reach millions of engaged tech professionals on a regular basis and significantly extends our company’s reach into the global tech community.”

The sites include:

Slashdot, a user-generated news, analysis, peer question and professional insight community. Tech professionals moderate the site which averages more than 5,300 comments daily and 3.7 million unique visitors each month.

SourceForge, a destination for technology professionals and enthusiasts to develop, download, review and publish open source software, much of which they use in their own organizations. Approximately 80 percent of its roughly 40 million monthly unique visitors are outside the U.S.

Freecode, one of the largest indexes of Linux, Unix and cross-platform software, as well as mobile applications generates nearly 500,000 unique visitors each month.
The acquisition builds on Dice.com’s rich history in providing the best content to help technology professionals succeed in their careers and reinforces the company’s commitment to deliver unique and valuable information to foster engagement in each of its communities.

Ken Langone, Chairman of Geeknet, added, “We are very pleased to find a new home for our media business, providing a platform for the sites and our media teams to thrive. With this transaction completed, we will now focus our full attention on growing ThinkGeek.”

Dice Holdings acquired the business for $20 million in cash. In 2011, the online media properties generated $20 million in Revenues.

About Dice Holdings, Inc.

Dice Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: DHX) is a leading provider of specialized websites for professional communities, including technology and engineering, financial services, energy, healthcare, and security clearance. Our mission is to help our customers source and hire the most qualified professionals in select and highly skilled occupations, and to help those professionals find the best job opportunities in their respective fields and further their careers. For more than 20 years, we have built our company by providing our customers with quick and easy access to high-quality, unique professional communities and offering those communities access to highly relevant career opportunities and information. Today, we serve multiple markets primarily in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia.

NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS:

This press release and oral statements made from time to time by Dice Holdings’ and Geeknet’s representatives contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “may,” “could,” “will,” “plan,” “estimate,” “should,” “anticipate,” “potential,” “intend,” “expect,” “believe,” and variations of such words and similar expressions, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements, which include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Geeknet’s expectations and beliefs regarding the future performance of its e-commerce businesses and statements regarding the future performance of the former Geeknet online media business by Dice Holdings. These statements are based on Geeknet and Dice Holdings’ respective current expectations, and involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements due to various factors, including possible changes in Geeknet’s short-term or long-term plans for its business, including, without limitation, its plans for growing the business, and Dice Holdings’ ability to successfully integrate the former Geeknet online media business. Other factors include, but are not limited to, competition from existing and future competitors in the highly competitive markets in which the Companies operate, failure to adapt business models to keep pace with rapid changes, failure to maintain and develop reputations and brand recognitions, failure to increase or maintain the number of customers in our respective businesses, cyclicality or downturns in the economy. In addition, Geeknet’s ability to grow its business is subject to numerous risk and uncertainties. Investors should consult with Geeknet and Dice Holdingsrespective filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, sec.gov, including the sections entitled “Risk Factors,” “Forward-Looking Statements,” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,”of their respective Annual Reports on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2011 and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q for the period ending June 30, 2012, for further information regarding these and other risks. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are based upon information available to Geeknet and Dice Holdings as of the date hereof, and neither Geeknet nor Dice Holdings assume any obligations to update such statements or the reasons why actual results could differ materially from those projected in such statements.

Some of them are still hard at it, and expect to go all the way up to the hard end date, but a few were ready to talk about how great their summer was.

I heard from Sancho Lerena of the Pandora FMS project, who told me that the summer went very well.

Give us an overview of what your project is.

Pandora FMS is an all-purpose monitoring system, but very oriented to big sites ( > 1000 nodes). It’s very very flexible and able to get information from almost any kind of source, and produce useful reports, alerts, graphs, etc.

What was your student’s assignment?

We try to use the student time in small and isolated tasks, or subprojects. We have three students and put each of them in different tasks, so they get interaction only with other developers in the project. They have been evolving a event viewer for Android and the Android agent, adding some features and increasing the usability and stability. Our other student has developed (from scratch) a Chrome and Firefox extension to show monitoring events by using our Web API.

Was the assignment completed to your satisfaction?

VERY satisfied.

When can we expect to see the fruits of the summer’s work in a released version?

Of course, all of three subjects has been produced useful code and will be used for next version, probably even before, because all of them are using interfaces and/or API compatible with current version, so, in a few weeks probably we’ll release something. All of this time they have been working with our SVN server, on Sourceforge, of course

Would you participate in GSoC again?

Will be a pleasure.

What advice can you give to a project interested in GSoC for next year?

Try to locate small parts of the project, something which don’t require learning a full API, a full architecture or Database design. Do a “roadmap” based on isolated subtasks, so if you there are any delays, you can remove some points, but have something functional at the end. If you plan five subtasks, but at the end you get only three, but these three are OK – you’ve got something to evolve and do more things in the future.

We had good luck, and two of the students (one from Spain, and other from UK) were near our main office, so we organized a small meeting at the beginning, That was useful to meet people and talk about what we all expected – much better than an IRC Meeting. With the other student, from Singapore, gtalk was the best tool to keep updated on progress and give tips.

You have to use CVS

Sourceforge has offered Subversion for many years – pretty much since Subversion was available.

But we’ve also offered Git for many years. We had Git long before Git was cool. In fact, Git is the default when you create a new project. And, the Sourceforge codebase itself (Codename: Allura) is developed in Git. On Sourceforge. The Sourceforge code is released under the Apache Software License (ASL2) and is just as free as everything else on Sourceforge.

Much like another popular code hosting service you might have heard of, our Git implementation provides one-button forking, and one-button pull requests.

Oh, we offer Mercurial (hg) hosting too, if you prefer.

We do, in fact, still offer CVS, but only to support older projects that haven’t gotten around to migrating yet – and there are a few. We’re available to help you migrate between various different SCM solutions, if you need that help.

New projects have to be approved

Long, long ago, we required that new projects be approved. This was a spam prevention measure. I remember those days, vaguely. That was at least four jobs ago, and a lot has changed since then. These days, creating a new project takes less than a minute, and does not involve any approval step.

You can’t customize your website

One default Sourceforge project site looks like another. But you have the option of creating a virtual host where you can put up a site that looks like whatever you want. Virtual hosts have tools you’d expect from a typical webhost, including php and mysql, but you can also install a variety of other things in order to make your project website whatever you need it to be.

We’ll answer requests for any hostname you have registered, as well as for PROJECTNAME.sf.net, and you can have up to ten virtual hosts per project. You then have access via your login shell to update those sites.

Sourceforge Is Dead

Ah, yes, the standard tech meme of announcing the death of whatever it is that you don’t like. As usual, it’s somewhat exaggerated.

We have almost 3.5 million registered users. The number of projects on Sourceforge is right at 325,000, and continues to grow every day. The existing projects continue to develop software, committing over 5,000 changes a day, closing tickets, and pushing out new releases, every day. And visitors from 40,000,000 unique addresses visited the website last month, downloading releases more than 4,000,000 times a day.

And Google seems to think we measure up pretty well to those other hosting sites. (via @robilad)

Meanwhile, yes, there are a lot of dormant and abandoned projects. This is also the case at Google Code, GitHub, and any other code hosting service you care to think of. It’s the normal lifecycle of Open Source software that some projects fall by the wayside. Some, because they are done, and there’s nothing more to do. Some because the developers lose interest and move on. And some because something else has been created that obsoletes it.

It is natural, and expected, that an older code hosting service will have a larger number of abandoned projects than the newcomers. We’re working on some ideas of community health metrics so that you can more quickly identify whether a particular project is active or not, while still keeping around the older projects that someone might still find useful. And we already incorporate project activity into search result ranking, so that these less active projects won’t be the ones that you find, most of the time, when you’re looking for software.

So, we think we’re pretty much alive, but we’re not resting on our laurels. The engineering team is working constantly on the platform, making it work better, look better, and scale better. And, for the criticisms of Sourceforge that are true, we’re working hard to correct them.

We think it’s worth your time to look into Sourceforge for yourself, and not just accept the myths.

Update: See this post about the “unknown” and “other” categories in the stats below.

It’s clear who has won the OS wars: The user.

Just a few short years ago, Apple computers were little more than afterthoughts outside of artists’ circles. They certainly were not the go-to computers for anyone serious about programming or software development. That was left to the Windows and Linux users.

At conferences, on Sourceforge, and in other open-source communities, the OS battle to be fought was clearly Windows vs Linux. Those who liked Microsoft could call upon the massive numbers of users. Those who preferred Linux could hold themselves up as the true standard-bearers of open source.

You would not have shown your face at, say, ApacheCon, with a MacBook.

In conversation with none other than SourceForge’s new Community Growth Hacker, Rich Bowen (from whom I shamelessly stole the opening sentence of this post), it’s clear the open source community has matured to the point where the platform matters little – it’s the product, the result, that’s important.

We combed through about two years’ worth of data on SourceForge, looking at the platforms of the users who downloaded projects, and millions more Mac users are downloading open source projects now than were in February 2010. In the same time, Windows downloads have increased by a much smaller percentage and Linux downloads have actually declined.

And let’s not forget those in the “other” category where the operating system of the folks who downloaded was unknown:

There were a few data points I found especially interesting, though a bit puzzling: April appears to be a slow month for downloading software on Sourceforge. If you look at all platforms, for each year, there was a significant dip in downloads.

Why? Perhaps it’s Spring fever. Given the fact that it’s an across-the-board dip two years running has some statistical significance. We’d need more information – and data from more years – to determine just what that significance is, though. I’d love to hear theories from readers in the comments, though.

A column on oStatic last year dissected the complex relationship Apple has had with open source, and pointed out how it made sense that Apple both used open source in its operating system and contributed code back to the community.

Apple isn’t big enough to control the programs people will use on their computers, the author pointed out, so the best alternative was to help ensure no one could, as Microsoft very nearly did in the 1990s. Helping keep the open source community robust helps prevent another near-monopoly like Internet Explorer was in that decade.

The Sourceforge downloads data aren’t the only stats that show the rise of the Mac in open source.

Evans Data Corp. this summer released a survey that showed Mac had surpassed Linux as a development platform. The survey, conducted in June, was of 400 professional software developers. While developers are still targeting Linux for development more than Macs, they’re using Mac as the actual platform more.

The developers are increasingly making their software good across multiple platforms, too. A good deal of Sourceforge downloads are on two, three or more platforms.

A cursory survey showed that most projects downloaded primarily for one or two platforms appeared to be much more utilitarian than those downloaded on all three platforms.

Projects such as TortoiseSVN and WinMerge are popular with Windows users. iTerm is popular with Mac and Linux users, enabling the setup of a Mac terminal emulator. Fink, naturally, is downloaded by Mac and Linux users, as it eases the integration of open source projects into their Mac and Darwin environments. X-Chat Aqua brings IRC to Mac and Linux.

An exception to this trend appears to be Linux users, who love downloading UTube Ripper, which allows them to download YouTube videos and convert them. Not altogether surprising that Linux users bucked the trend, though, given that common sense would say they’re much more likely to seek out open source for most of their software needs.

On the flip side, many of the programs downloaded regularly by users regardless of platform tended to be more for alternatives to expensive proprietary software and therefore more useful to a wide variety of people.

Projects such as Audacity for audio editing, Gimp (Windows and Mac versions) for image editing, Sweet Home 3D for virtual interior design, Celestia for 3D visualizations of outer space and Hugin for panorama stitching and processing showed up as big downloads for Microsoft, Mac and Linux.

What will be an interesting statistic down the road will be where iOS and Android downloads start increasing. As tablets grab hold of more of the market, more open source projects will be made available for those OS and the smartphone OS – of which Apple and Android are the most common. No doubt, some of the downloads in the “other” category are for those OS.

It’s heartening to see so much diversity in the open source community – the idea behind open source is, after all, freedom of choice.

Amy Vernon was a professional newspaper journalist for 20 years before working as a freelance writer and consultant for a variety of publications. She has covered open source for the enterprise for Network World and consumer technology for Hot Hardware, among other sites. She uses Adium, Open Office, NeoOffice, Sea Monkey and other open source programs on a near-daily basis.

We talk about the concepts of “open source” all the time, as they relate to technology: collaboration, openness, freedom, and community. But how do we explain these concepts to people who aren’t familiar with technology, much less something as abstract as “open source?” It’s a challenging problem, but one we must address if we want to ensure the growth of the open source ecosystem, and spread the word about how open source can benefit us all.

That’s why I was thrilled to be able to visit a unique space in Columbia, South Carolina called IT-oLogy, where seeing is believing. It’s a place where anyone can go to play with, experiment with, and learn about open source and technology. They make open source accessible to everyone! I had great the pleasure of speaking with Todd Lewis, from the IT-oLogy team.

IT-oLogy is a non-profit collaboration of businesses, academic institutions and organizations dedicated to growing the IT talent pipeline and advancing the IT profession. IT-oLogy has three main initiatives: Promote IT (K-12), Teach IT (Higher Education) and Grow IT (Professionals).

• * Promote IT: IT-oLogy works with K-12 schools to encourage the best and brightest young people and their parents to learn more about the IT profession.
• * Teach IT: In collaboration with IT-oLogy, companies work with colleges and universities on applied business research projects and experiential learning opportunities that strengthen and align classroom skills to current and future IT business needs.
• * Grow IT: IT-oLogy partners with IT professionals and their companies to provide innovative and life-long learning and professional development opportunities.

In February, IT-oLogy opened the doors of its newly renovated headquarters in downtown Columbia. IT-oLogy took 22,000 square feet of traditional office space and transformed it into a hub of technology. The venue boasts a 200 person theater, a distance learning classroom, The Portal (gaming development room), the Open IT Lab and more. The new space is being used as a hands-on place for students, educators and professionals to learn, test and develop IT skills.

Students, teachers, professors and IT professionals of all types are welcome to visit the Open IT Lab and learn more about open source and the general concept of ‘openness.’ Parents are also more than welcome to visit.

As far as the Open IT Lab is concerned, the biggest obstacle has surprisingly been deciding what the focus of the Lab will be. In addition to Awareness, Education and Research & Development, the concept of ‘open’ also applies to software, hardware and content (data and media). How to effectively address those areas, and developing the content around each of them once priorities have been determined, is a tough task.

The success story that immediately comes to mind are the many teachers that have visited the Lab, listened to a presentation on open source, and expressed a desire to take it back to the classroom. Many, many teachers have volunteered to even work on projects being run out of the Lab. When you can get educators excited about open source and the ‘open’ concept it’s extremely rewarding.

Another is that of an educator (Ann Bryson-Eldrige) who came to POSSCON and a tour of IT-oLogy and realized the facility and skill set available was a great match with her upcoming graduate project. In less than a month we were able to put together a class of 25 middle school students that she taught all about Open Source on laptops we were able to provide with a full Open Source suite of tools.

Plans for the future include expanding the content being offered as well as the companies and individuals we work with. We’ve got a great core group now but we’ll need many more involved to get the word out to the masses. We’d also love for many of these companies and individuals to open up offices or expand operations around the Lab. Many people don’t know it, but South Carolina is a hub of IT activity and is incredibly progressive in this regard.

Content expansion includes a national outreach – online courses, speaking engagements at national conferences and materials we will be making available to schools and businesses throughout the country.

There are one or two other open source labs around, the Oregon State University Open Source Lab comes to mind for example.

More information can be found at www.IT-oLogy.org or www.open-it-lab.com. We also welcome visitors to the Open IT Lab. We’d love to show people around!

Todd, thanks again for giving me the opportunity to visit your awesome space and I highly encourage anyone who is in the area, or anyone who wants to help Todd and the rest of the team to reach out to them.

So when the topic of renaming the project came about, the lead developer of TexMakerX reached out to his community to choose a new name. The community settled on TeXstudio, and the project was renamed accordingly. If you’re a TexMakerX user, make sure to take note of this change.

Both projects are excellent tools. If you’re a frequent user of LaTeX and *not* using a LaTeX-specific text editor, you should be!

For more information on the Texmaker project: http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/

For more information on the TeXstudio project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/texstudio/

Researchers Yann Algan and Yochai Benkler tell us that “this research project is intended to examine the microfoundations and dynamics of online interactions between internet users of various types through the application of interactive survey methods. We recruit participants to fill out a survey on LimeSurvey, an open source survey tool, which combines decision making involving money with substantive questions about attitudes and practices.”

This research is important because, as Yann says, “the ultimate objective of the study is understand better the interactions between developers and ultimately to improve the design and organization of online social spaces.” In other words their results will hopefully make the sites we use better, and improve interaction for us all.

Because they must keep their sample size balanced and representative of all different types of projects, they have hand-selected a group of participants they’d like to survey. If you are one of these chosen projects, I highly encourage you to pay attention to their email, and participate in the survey. You will be compensated for your time.

The coolest thing about this research project is that they are going to open access to the resulting data (while keeping full anonymity of participants intact.) Anyone will be able to use the data that they gather any way that they see fit. We’ll be sure to report back on what they find.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what the team comes up with and again, I encourage you to participate if you’re one of the chosen few.