Romanian Open Source Education

Overview Booklet
 1 ROSEdu is a community that brings together
people with passion for programming, open-
source software and IT.
About ROSEdu At this point most ROSEdu members are
students at the Automatic Control and
Computers Faculty, University “Politehnica” of
Bucharest. New members are welcome
regardless of their background.

Our belief is that everyone should benefit

from our projects and activities. This is why
everything we create uses an FOSS licensing
system. The copyright nevertheless belongs to
the people taking part at various ROSEdu
projects.

Although many of our projects are related to

university educational environment, other
kinds of projects may be created depending on
the preferences and needs of ROSEdu
members.

For any information regarding ROSEdu please

use the Contact form at the end of this
booklet.

ROSEdu 3
Overview Booklet – May 2009
 2 ROSEdu consists of volunteers and enthusiasts
passionate about free/open-source software,
open technologies and communities.
Team Started as a community project in the spring
of 2007, ROSEdu is currently working on
becoming a fully-fledged non-profit
organization.

Most ROSEdu members are students at the

Automatic Control and Computers Faculty. At
this point there is no formal status defined,
such that a ROSEdu member is a person with
constant involvement in community activities.

Members of ROSEdu include (but are not

limited to): Alex Eftimie, Andrei Buhaiu, Vlad
Dogaru, Sergiu Iordache, Mihai Maruseac,
Andrei Soare, Lucian Grijincu, Mihai
Dumitrache, Razvan Deaconescu, Lucian
Cojocar, Andrada Georgescu, Alex Juncu, Vali
Priescu.

ROSEdu members value passion about

technology and communities, diversity,
knowledge sharing, on-topic and off-topic
discussions. We enjoy being part of activities
that are both fun and useful.

ROSEdu 4
Overview Booklet – May 2009
 3 ROSEdu coordinates two types of activies:
• open-source development projects

Projects • community development

Most of the projects are focused on easing the

transition to an open-source environment
(operating system, basic applications, GUI,
development tools).

We are trying to blend as much as possible the

fun/passion/enthusiasm factor with the
usefulness project. The development projects
are aimed at solving a particular problem or
optimizing certain aspects of day to day
activities.

Most of our activities take part under the

umbrella of the CS Department. Some projects
(WoUSO, CSpay, vmchecker) have been
integrated in educational or administration
activities of the department.

We are always open to new ideas and value

initiative and involvement. An interesting
project or activity is welcome as a ROSEdu
project even if it's not coming from a ROSEdu
member.

ROSEdu 5
Overview Booklet – May 2009
 Ubuntu Install Fest
One of the first community events that
ROSEdu organized was Ubuntu Install Fest. We
have coordinated two Ubuntu Install Fests
following the same recipe used by other
Ubuntu Communities.
The main target group were freshmen and
people new to Ubuntu and open-source
technologies, but the initiative was open to
everyone.
Although Ubuntu was the primary distribution
used for installation and configuration, we
provided support for other distributions as
well.
ROSEdu
Overview Booklet – May 2009
ROSEdu summer of code
ROSEdu Summer of Code is a project whose
aim is to give students an alternative summer
internship program. Students and enthusiasts
can be a part of existing or new ROSEdu
projects.
We aim to help the participants become better
programmers and familiarize themselves with
the FOSS development environment and
working in a community.
As it name shows, the development
environment took its inspiration from Google
Summer of Code. Students may apply to one
of the projects presented on the site.
Development occurs during the summer
holiday but further collaboration is welcome.
This summer (2009) we will continue the
tradition and host RSoCv2. Many of RSoCv1’s
projects year will be included.
Hosted at RSoCv1:
• Hammerfall – general purpose graphics
engine written in Python
• VMChecker – automated tool for
homework evaluation
• WoUSO – educational game for 1st year
students
• CSpay – administration tool for automating
the creation of salary documents
• Tigus – bar code test generator
6
 CDL CSPay
The Open Source Development Course is an 8 CSPay, one of the first projects developed at
week event consisting of various activities ROSEdu, is an administration tool used for
(courses, hackathons, application based automating the creation of salary documents
workshops) for students at the University in University “Politehnica” of Bucharest.
“Politehnica” of Bucharest. It focuses on useful
Its main software components were two
open source development tools and working
underlying libraries and a set of user interfaces
in an open source community.
(CLI and WebUI).
At its first year, the course was attended by 16
CSPay was developed using C, PHP, Python,
students (around 80 students applied). It was
and shell scripts. This was our first occasion to
divided in two components:
learn how to use revision control systems and
• a course during which theoretical mailing lists and how to work as a community.
knowledge about working on a project is
presented The project was part of ROSEdu Summer of
Code during which it was restructured and
• a workshop where students learn practical
improved. CSPay is used by university staff at
skills of using open-source tools
the Automatic Control and Computers Faculty.
The course aims at preparing students for their
first experience with free/open-source
applications and communities.

ROSEdu 7
Overview Booklet – May 2009
 Hammerfal Graphics Engine
The Hammerfall project aims at creating a
graphics engine using portable and open
source tools. Development and
implementation technologies include:
OpenGL, Python, SVN and Trac.
The project was launched over an year ago
and was part of the first edition of ROSEdu
Summer Of Code. This period was used for
establishing the project’s baselines and
purpose. Development has continued to this
day and Hammerfall will be included in
ROSEdu Summer Of Code v2.
Our team consists of 1st, 2nd and 3rd year
students from the Automatic Control and
Computers Faculty, UPB.
The current goal is creating a generic graphics
engine that can be used in as many
applications as possible ranging from
simulators to computer games.
ROSEdu
Overview Booklet – May 2009
World of USO
WoUSO (World of USO) is an educational
game targeting students of the Operating
System Usage (OSU) course of the Automatic
Control and Computers faculty. It is meant to
encourage acquiring knowledge in an
educational and competitive mode.
The game is in its second year, attracting over
100 students in the 2008-2009 academic year.
The best students were given special awards
at the end of the competition.
WoUSO is being actively developed and will
continue into the 3rd version. The
technologies used are web specific: PHP,
MySQL, Smarty and XML.
WoUSO is a free open source software and is
distributed under an open source license. It
was awarded the first prize during the
Scientific Student Presentations of 2008.
8
 vmchecker
Automated homework testing increases the
assignment quality and educational
experience of the students. This also
encourages students to create better
homework.
vmchecker is a scalable homework testing
framework that can be used for a wide range
of courses, enabling the evaluation of
homework needing complete administrative
rights on a system.
vmchecker is used to test homework for
Compiler Course (java homework for source
code translation), Operating Systems (C/C++
homework using Linux/Windows syscalls),
Operating System Design (kernel drivers and
modules needing complete access on the
system) at the Computer Science department
in Politehnica University of Bucharest.
vmchecker was awarded the first prize during
the Scientific Student Presentations of 2009.
ROSEdu
Overview Booklet – May 2009
Social Thingie
We all need a little R&R every now and then.
ROSEdu Social Thingie is focused on the more
social part of a community.
All work and no play makes John a robotic
programmer, and we don’t want that at
ROSEdu. We want to include as much fun and
passion both in our projects and also other
activities. A little bit of fun is particularly
useful for team building and community
binding.
After two successful editions we decided to
organize Social Thingie events on a regular
basis. So far social activities included bowling,
air hockey and other games we consider fun.
9
 4 Site
www.rosedu.org
Contact
Mailing list
http://lists.rosedu.org/listinfo/rosedu-general

IRC channel
#rosedu@irc.freenode.net

Trac
http://dev.rosedu.org

Live Contact
"Politehnica" University of Bucharest, EG106c
(IXIA Lab).

ROSEdu 10
Overview Booklet – May 2009