Libre (free, open source) software development has been gaining attention from the research community during the last years. Currently, many research groups are focused on understanding, and trying to improve, the practices, procedures and products of the libre software development community. This research is starting to produce a new view on many aspects of the classical software engineering paradigms. In fact, if the lessons shown in most classical software engineering texts were applied to almost any libre software development project, it should be concluded that it was headed to failure. And yet it moves... Libre software is showing a new way of organizing software development projects, in forms that make success possible under circumstances previously thought to be unmanageable.

In this context, the relationship between research groups focused on understanding libre software, and software development groups actually producing libre software, can be of great interest for both parties. FOSDEM, probably the largest meeting point for libre software developers in Europe, provides an opportunity for this contact and exchange of ideas. The idea of the Research Room at FOSDEM is to explore the opportunities of this exchange, and what happens when developers and researchers are put together in the same (physical) space.

Therefore, we're asking for contributions both from researchers and developers, on the following topics (the list is not exhaustive):

• What developers feel could be useful from research on libre software
• Feedback from the developer community to researchers
• Experiences of developers and researchers working together
• Results of applying research methodologies and analysis to libre software projects
• Results (including expected results) of research projects studying libre software
• What can the research community offer to libre software development
• Methodologies and techniques that could be used to address specific problems in libre software development

Although academic presentations are welcome, other, more informal (and maybe provocative) contributions are also encouraged. The main target is to have a good collection of ideas and experiences to foster discussion and interaction.

Those interested in contributing are invited to submit a short paper in PDF format, summarizing the intended contents of the presentation (probably two or three pages are enough, but no paper will be rejected for being too long). It should provide enough information to let the organizing committee decide on its appropriateness for the workshop, and the potential interest for participants.

Submissions

• Deadline for submissions: January 22rd 2007
• Notification of acceptance: January 31st 2007
• Workshop dates: February 24th (afternoon) and 25th (morning) 2007

Submissions should be sent to all three addresses below, by the deadline:

• Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona - jgb at gsyc.escet.urjc.es
• Israel Herraiz - herraiz at gsyc.escet.urjc.es
• Gregorio Robles - grex at gsyc.escet.urjc.es

Accepted papers will be published on-line, after letting authors provide more complete versions, if they want.

Organizing committee :

• Ioannis Antoniades (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece)
• Adriaan de Groot (KDE)
• Jean-Christophe Deprez (CETIC, Belgium)
• Roberto Di Cosmo (University of Paris VII, France)
• Rishab Ghosh (MERIT, Nederlands)
• Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
• Israel Herraiz (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
• Stefan Koch (Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria)
• Sebastian Kugler (KDE)
• Stéphane Laurière (Mandriva, France)
• Martin Michlmayr (University of Cambridge, UK)
• Gregorio Robles (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
• Diomidis Spinellis (Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece)
• Ioannis Stamelos (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece)

Sponsors

The Research Room at FOSDEM is sponsored by the following projects (although the meeting is completely open to anyone interested):

• FLOSSMETRICS
• QUALOSS
  
• SQO-OSS
• QUALIPSO
• FLOSSWORLD
• EDOS

All these projects are funded in part by the European Commission, under the Information Society Technologies (IST) research programme of the Sixth Framework Program. A list of the IST projects in the area of Software Technologies is available from http://cordis.europa.eu/ist/st/projects.htm.