DN572973351

Subject: ANN: Open Source (Python) Design Competition - DN [1]

Greg Wilson <gvwilson@nevex.com> - 15 Jan 2000 - comp.lang.python

 [Note: Python's own Guido van Rossum will be one of the judges,
 and all implementations are to be written in (or at least scripted
 with) Python!  The project coordinator, Greg Wilson, will be at
 IPC8 in Washington with more news...]

 Los Alamos National Laboratory                     CodeSourcery, LLC

                           Software Carpentry
                   http://www.software-carpentry.com

                     Open Source Design Competition

                          $100,000 in Prizes!

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------

 The Software Carpentry project is pleased to announce its first Open
 Source design competition, with prizes totaling $100,000.  Students
 and professionals from any country, working individually or in teams,
 are invited to submit design outlines for:

 * a platform inspection tool to replace autoconf;

 * a dependency management tool to replace make;

 * an issue tracking system to replace gnats and Bugzilla; and

 * a unit and regression testing harness with the functionality of
   XUnit, Expect, and DejaGnu.

 The best four entries in each category will be awarded $2500, and
 invited to submit full designs by June 1, 2000.  The best design in
 each category will then receive an additional $7500, while runners-up
 will each receive $2500.  Once winning designs have been announced,
 $200,000 will be available through open bidding for implementation,
 testing, and documentation.

 Participants may submit separate entries in one or more categories by
 March 31, 2000.  Entries must be in English, and no more than 5000
 words long.  For more information, see the Software Carpentry web site
 at http://www.software-carpentry.com.  All of the project's work will
 be Open Source; all tools will be written in, or scriptable with,
 Python, and will be required to run on both Linux and Microsoft
 Windows NT.

 The competition will be judged by a panel that includes the following
 noted software developers, authors, and computational scientists:

     Stephen Adler       (Brookhaven National Laboratory)
     Frank Alexander     (Los Alamos National Laboratory)
     Donnie Barnes       (Red Hat)
     Chris DiBona        (VA Linux)
     Paul Dubois         (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
     Andrew Hunt         (Pragmatic Programmers, LLC)
     Stephen R. Lee      (Los Alamos National Laboratory)
     Josh MacDonald      (University of California, Berkeley)
     Brian Marick        (Reliable Software Technologies)
     Doug Mewhort        (Queen's University)
     Bruce Perens        (co-founder of the Open Source Initiative)
     Dave Thomas         (Pragmatic Programmers, LLC)
     Jon Udell           (author of Practical Internet Groupware)
     Guido van Rossum    (inventor of Python)
     Tom Van Vleck       (TransIlluminant)
     Phil Wadler         (Bell Labs)
     Scot Wingo          (AuctionRover)

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------

 The Software Carpentry project is sponsored by the Advanced Computing
 Laboratory at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National
 Laboratory (http://www.acl.lanl.gov), and administered by
 CodeSourcery, LLC (http://www.codesourcery.com).  The project's aim is
 to encourage adoption of better software development practices by
 making software tools easier to use, and by documenting design,
 testing, and related activities.  For more information on the project,
 or to let us know that you intend to submit a proposal, see
 http://www.software-carpentry.com, or mail info@software-carpentry.com.