[Python-Dev] re: Open Source design competition / Python / software tools

[Jim Fulton]

gvwilson@nevex.com wrote:
> 
> Hi, folks.  I hope you don't mind another mail out of the blue, but I got
> notice on Saturday that the Department of Energy is giving me $860K over
> two years to support development of easier-to-use software engineering
> tools.  All of the work will be Open Source, and will be done in Python,
> with a strong emphasis on design, testing, and documentation.  The
> project's long-term objective is to encourage scientists and engineers to
> treat programs in the same way as they do other experiments, i.e. to
> calibrate, test, peer review, and so on.
> 
> To kick-start things, we're going to be holding a two-round design
> competition.  Anyone (individual or team, professional or student) can
> submit a short entry for the first round; the judges will pick four
> candidates to go forward in each of four categories, and those
> individuals or teams will be asked to submit full entries. The four
> categories are:
> 
> * an issue tracking system to replace Gnats and Bugzilla;
> 
> * a build system to replace make;
> 
> * a platform inspection and configuration system to replace autoconf;
>   and
> 
> * a testing framework to replace XUnit, Expect, and DejaGnu.
> 
> Would you be interested in participating in any way

Are these categories fixed? I see a very strong need for an 
open-source UML modeling tool. UML is extremely powerful, but current
UML tools largely suck and are very expensive.  We are contemplating
launching an open-source development effort to build UML modeling tools
using Zope or the Zope object database as a repository. A contest
like this could help to kick-start this effort, but tools to automate
requirements and design seem to be missing. This is odd, considering that
up-front activities like requirements and design have the largest impact
on software-engineering project success.

Jim

--
Jim Fulton           mailto:jim@digicool.com   Python Powered!        
Technical Director   (888) 344-4332            http://www.python.org  
Digital Creations    http://www.digicool.com   http://www.zope.org    

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