liveblogging from ICSE

Today I'm at ICSE (International Conference on Software Engineering) in Minneapolis, MN, USA. Today I'm in the First International Workshop on Emerging Trends in FLOSS Research and Development.

The keynote is currently being given by Jim Herbsleb from Carnegie Mellon. He's currently talking about the difference in open source and closed source development. Most of this is pretty well understood by those of us already in the FLOSS world (but this is not everyone at this conference, so it's worth hearing...), but he just made one extremely interesting point:

In FLOSS, the users determine the functionality of the project. In the proprietary world, the product managers determine the functionality of the software. This is something that has bothered me for years about proprietary software, ever since I actually worked in a software company where we were "slaves to the matrix". (The matrix is the grid of features that is on the back of the box of software comparing your product to your competitors. Sometimes the matrix is shown in product magazines when they try to get all "Consumer Reports" and attempt to compare products in an agnostic way.)

The result of the project manager (or the back-of-the-box matrix) driving the feature list is that you end up with a lot of dumb and rarely-used features. This results in bloated software that can be a pain to update and develop.

Which professors do I remember?

Tony Crider was asking me tonight which professors I actually remember from college. (It's been a long time.) Did I remember the course and the professor's name, or just the courses? I remember a lot, more than I thought I would. Here are some:

Dr. Rhyne, sociology of groups - This course was on Marxism. I hated the course, but I rather liked this cranky, crotchety old guy. I got a terrible grade, I think a C+ or a B- or something.

Dr. Leadbetter, greek - Ancient Greek as a freshman. A bit intimidating.

Dr. Barbara Watkinson - art history. Wrote an amazing comment on my final paper which I still remember to this day. She said a bunch of nice things and then wrote, "A. Please take my class next semester." I always remember how great that felt. It was much better than a regular A.

Dr. Mastro - government. I believe that (looking back now) he was some sort of visiting professor. He brought in some pretty big-name speakers for us, including Mark Shields.

Dr. Ron Rapoport - government. (public polling & survey analysis) -- We did presidential polling during the 1992 Clinton election. We also learned to do telephone surveys. Interesting class.

Dr. John McGlennon - government. I took The Presidency and The Legislature from him, I think. He was a nice guy. Don't remember much about the classes, but I did like them.

Dr. Morrow - government. Took local governments with him. He made us take the Myers-Briggs test and figure out which role we would be in local government. I wrote my final paper on the impact of Wal-Mart on the urban planning of small towns. He was on my honors thesis committee and invited me and my parents to brunch at his house on graduation morning. What a classy thing to do!

Dr. Eric Jensen - basic economics. I think I took both macro and micro from him. He was young and always used 'pizza' and 'beer' as the goods in the distribution.

Dr. Campbell - public sector economics. I was a terrible, no-talent student in this class. (I had some sort of mental block.) He helped me diligently, and I showed up to office hours. He probably wished I didn't show up. I did work hard, but I just didn't do well.

Professor Pease - architecture. I learned CAD from him and busted out some mean foam core models. He was also on my thesis committee.

Professor Iwinski - 2D foundations, 3D foundations. I was much better at 3D than 2D, but I really enjoyed Japanese ink painting. In 3D we made a clay sculpture of our hands which I had for many years. Not sure if I still have it somewhere or what.

And of course, my mentor, Dr. James D. Kornwolf. What a fun guy. He was my mentor for my Sr. honors thesis. One time he and his wife flew down to Miami and I gave them a tour of Miami Beach. He bought me and my boyfriend at the time (who was also my photographer) an iced tea afterwards. We were really expecting lunch, but hey. He also had our small seminar class (Baroque and Ren town planning) over to his house for dinner and drinks one night. I remember he served kalamata olives with the pits still in, and I had no idea what to do with the pit after I'd eaten the olive part. I think I might have swallowed it.

There are numerous courses I remember fondly but the professors names I forget... such as Probability, Islamic Art, Worlds of Music, Human Biology, and Intro Shakespeare. Those were interesting and good classes.