Integration of libre software applications to create a collaborative work platform for researchers at GET (preview)Abstract Libre software provides powerful applications ready to be integrated for the build-up of platforms for internal use in organizations. We describe the architecture of the collaborative work platform which we have integrated, designed for researchers at GET. We present the elements we have learned during this project in particular with respect to contribution to external libre projects, in order to better ensure the maintainability of the internal applications, and to phpGroupware as a framework for specific applications development. Keywords. Free software, Libre software, Open Source software, in-house applications, collaborative work environment, groupware, phpGroupware, wiki, TWiki, Sympa, WebDAV, OpenLDAP, contribution, ProGET, PicoLibre
Although it may be enhanced on numerous aspects, the ProGET platform delivers a range of features without competition in existing libre software collaborative work platforms, for a modest development cost. There are strong needs in higher-grade research and teaching institutions for tools supporting collaborative work. ProGET can then constitute a reference point for organizations wishing to integrate, for their custom needs, existing libre software applications for collaborative work. Even if a policy is adopted for the contribution to the libre software projects used, in order to lower certain maintainance costs, the generalization of the use of the present platform at GET and the future developments necessary to enhance it will only be possible through a substantial investment, which may be far more important than what was spent for the first initial developments. One possibility for the reduction of these costs could be the mutualization of the development between several organizations. It could be articulated around the industrialization as well-packaged libre software programs of the most generic elements of ProGET, leading the way to a new generation PicoLibre platform. [Adams_et_al,2005] Adams P., C. Boldyreff, D. Nutter and S. Rank, 2005, Adaptive Reuse of Libre Software Systems for Supporting On-Line Collaboration, in: 5-WOSSE: Proceedings of the fifth workshop on Open source software engineering, ACM Press, p. 1-4. [Bac_et_al,2005] Bac C., O. Berger, V. Deborde and B. Hamet, 2005, Why and how to contribute to libre software when you integrate them into an in-house application ?, in: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Open Source Systems, p. 113-118. [Bauer_and_Pizka,2003] Bauer A. and M. Pizka, 2003, The Contribution of Free Software to Software Evolution, in: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution (IWPSE), IEEE Computer Society, [Cousin_et_al,2002] Cousin E., G. Ouvradou, P. Pucci and S. Tardieu, 2002, PicoLibre a free collaborative platform to improve students skills in software engineering, in: 2002 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Vol.1, IEEE, p. 564-568. [Mockus_et_al,2002] Mockus A., R. FieldingT., and J. HerbslebD., 2002, Two case studies of open source software development: Apache and Mozilla, ACM.Trans.Softw.Eng.Methodol. 11, 309. [Dridi_and_Neuman,1999] Dridi F. and G. Neumann, 1999, How to implement Web-based Groupware Systems based on WebDAV, in: WETICE '99: Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Enabling Technologies on Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises, IEEE Computer Society, p. 114-119. [WebDAV] Goland Y., E. Whitehead, A. Faizi, S. Carter, and D. Jensen, RFC 2518: HTTP Extensions for Distributed Authoring (WEBDAV), http://webdav.org/ [wiki] URL : "Wiki" article in the Wikipedia encyclopedia, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki [sourceforge] URL : SourceForge project hosting platform, http://sourceforge.net/ [sympa] URL : Sympa project website, http://www.sympa.org/ [twiki] URL : TWiki project website, http://twiki.org/ [picolibre] URL : Website for project PicoLibre, http://www.picolibre.org/ [phpgw] URL : Website for the phpGroupWare project, http://www.phpgroupware.org/ [OpenLDAP] URL : Website of the OpenLDAP project, http://www.openldap.org/ [Wheeler,2005] Wheeler D.A.: Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS, FLOSS, or FOSS)? Look at the Numbers!, http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html | ||||