[opensym] reviewing the introduction section

Paulo Meireles
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Showing 1 changed file with 80 additions and 85 deletions Show diff stats
opensym2017/content/01-introduction.tex
@@ -2,108 +2,103 @@
 \label{sec:intro}
 The Brazilian Government released in the year 2000 the Eletronic Government
-program (eGov) aiming at democratizing information access and improving the 
-public provision quality of service and information. In 2003, the Brazilian 
-President created a committee for implementation of free 
-software(\footnote{\url{http://www.softwarelivre.gov.br/documentos-oficiais/
-DecretoComite}}) and thereafter the Chief of Staff of Brazil sent a circular-
-letter to all Ministries in which the recommendation to adopt Free/Libre/Open 
-Source Software (FLOSS\footnote{In this work, the acronym ``FLOSS'' is 
-used as a representative for ``Free Software'', ``Open Source Software'' (OSS),
-and``Free/Open Source Software'' (FOSS).}) became a public policy
-(\footnote{\url{http://www.softwarelivre.gov.br/documentos-oficiais/circulardoministro}}).
+program (eGov) aiming at democratizing information access and improving the
+public provision quality of service and information. In 2003, the Brazilian
+President created a
+committee\footnote{\url{http://www.softwarelivre.gov.br/documentos-oficiais/
+DecretoComite}} for implementation of  Free/Libre/Open Source Software
+(FLOSS\footnote{In this work, the acronym ``FLOSS'' is used as a representative
+for ``Free Software'', ``Open Source Software'' (OSS), and``Free/Open Source
+Software'' (FOSS).}) and thereafter the Chief of Staff of Brazil sent a
+circular- letter to all Ministries in which the recommendation to adopt FLOSS
+became a public
+policy\footnote{\url{http://www.softwarelivre.gov.br/documentos-oficiais/circulardoministro}}.
 In 2007, the Brazilian Public Software Portal (\textit{Portal do Software
-Público Brasileiro}, in Portuguese) was released with the goal of sharing FLOSS projects developed by, or for, the Brazilian Government.  Additionally, the
+Público Brasileiro}, in Portuguese) was released with the goal of sharing FLOSS
+projects developed by, or for, the Brazilian Government.  Additionally, the
 Brazilian legal instrument on software contracting (known as IN 04/2012)
 mandates that public agents must prioritize solutions available on the SPB
 Portal. The acquisition of a proprietary solution must be explicitly justified
 by demonstrating that there is no suitable alternative on the SPB Portal. In
 2013, the Brazilian Federal Court issued a ruling (\textit{Acórdão 2314/2013})
-about contracts between the public administration and suppliers using agile 
+about contracts between the public administration and suppliers using agile
 methodologies in software development.
 Despite of these legal advancements, in practice, Brazilian government agents
-still do not practice, or even understand, 
-collaborative and empirical software development methods,
-such as free software or agile methodologies. Thus,
-hierarchical and traditional processes and the lack
-of expertise of public agents in real-world software development produce
-inefficiency in software development contracts, besides
-unjustifiable expending of taxpayers money.
+still do not practice, or even understand, collaborative and empirical software
+development methods, such as FLOSS or agile methodologies. Thus, hierarchical
+and traditional processes and the lack of expertise of public agents in
+real-world software development produce inefficiency in software development
+contracts, besides unjustifiable expending of taxpayers money.
 Since 2009, the SPB Portal has had several technical issues. The original
-codebase development has stopped, leaving substantial
-technical debt~\cite{refactoring}.
-The system was a modified version of an
-existing FLOSS platform called OpenACS \footnote{\url{http://openacs.org}}, and
-the old SPB Portal did not receive updates from OpenACS releases.
-In this scenario, the portal maintenance has become increasingly
-difficult.
-
-After collecting requirements from the Federal
-Government and society, a new platform for the SPB Portal was
-developed, between January 2014 and June 2016, by the University of Brasília
-(UnB) and the University of São Paulo (USP) in a partnership with the Brazilian
-Ministry of Planning, Budget, and Management (MP). It was designed as an
-integrated platform for collaborative software development \cite{bobr2003},
-including social networking, mailing lists, version control
-system, and source code quality monitoring. To coordinate and develop this
-project during 30 months, UnB was funded by a grant
-of 2,619,965.00 BRL (about 750,000.00 USD in June 2016)
-from the Federal Government.
-
+codebase development has stopped, leaving substantial technical
+debt~\cite{refactoring}.  The system was a modified version of an existing
+FLOSS platform called OpenACS\footnote{\url{http://openacs.org}}, and the old
+SPB Portal did not receive updates from OpenACS releases.  In this scenario,
+the portal maintenance has become increasingly difficult.
+After collecting requirements from the Federal Government and society, a new
+platform for the SPB Portal was developed, between January 2014 and June 2016,
+by the University of Brasília (UnB) and the University of São Paulo (USP) in a
+partnership with the Brazilian Ministry of Planning, Budget, and Management
+(MP). It was designed as an integrated platform for collaborative software
+development \cite{bobr2003}, including social networking, mailing lists,
+version control system, and source code quality monitoring. To coordinate and
+develop this project during 30 months, UnB was funded by a grant of
+2,619,965.00 BRL (about 750,000.00 USD in June 2016) from the Federal
+Government.
 The project was developed by a team of three professors, two masters students,
-about fifty undergraduate students (not all of them at the same time,
-since the team changed along the time),
-two professional designers, and six senior developers from free software
-communities. Professors and undergraduate students were from UnB and
-master students were from USP. Regarding the designers and senior
-developers, seven of eight were living outside Brasília, the UnB location.
-Two of them were abroad at Dominican Republic and Canada.
-In other words, we had a distributed team working in a
-collaborative virtual environment. This diversity of actors and the
-relationships between industry, academy, and government also made the project a
-valued opportunity to explore the benefits and challenges of using
-FLOSS~\cite{kon2011,deKoenigsberg2008, fagerholm2013, fagerholm2014} and
+about fifty undergraduate students (not all of them at the same time, since the
+team changed along the time), two professional designers, and six senior
+developers from FLOSS communities. Professors and undergraduate students were
+from UnB and master students were from USP. Regarding the designers and senior
+developers, seven of eight were living outside Brasília, the UnB location.  Two
+of them were abroad at Dominican Republic and Canada.  In other words, we had a
+distributed team working in a collaborative virtual environment. This diversity
+of actors and the relationships between industry, academy, and government also
+made the project a valued opportunity to explore the benefits and challenges of
+using FLOSS~\cite{kon2011,deKoenigsberg2008, fagerholm2013, fagerholm2014} and
 Agile~\cite{steghofer2016, harzl2017} practices for Software Engineering
 education.
-All the code was developed as open source. The changes we needed in the
-FLOSS tools were implemented by ourselves and
-contributed back to their respective communities. Our
-process was based on agile practices and FLOSS communities interaction.
-We incrementally released five versions of the new SPB
-Portal. The first release (beta) was in September 2014, only 9 months
-from the beginning of the project. The old portal was shut down in
-September 2015. Finally, the last version was
-released in June 2016.
+All the code was developed as open source. The changes we needed in the FLOSS
+tools were implemented by ourselves and contributed back to their respective
+communities. Our process was based on agile practices and FLOSS communities
+interaction.  We incrementally released five versions of the new SPB Portal.
+The first release (beta) was in September 2014, only 9 months from the
+beginning of the project. The old portal was shut down in September 2015.
+Finally, the last version was released in June 2016.
-In this paper, we present an overview of the new SPB Portal.
-The paper shares the methodology employed to develop this project.
-This methodology has the goals of satisfying Government 
-requirements and adhering as much as possible to FLOSS and agile
-practices~\cite{mockus2002, tosi2015}. Moreover, we discuss lessons
-learned in providing a distributed and collaborative virtual environment involving
-a large undergraduate students team and remote senior developers. Finally, we
-released an innovative platform for helping the Brazilian government to apply
-empirical software development methods. This case can help other projects to
-overcome similar software engineering challenges in the future, as well as to
-illustrate how universities can improve the real-world experience of their
-students.
+In this paper, we present an overview of the new SPB Portal.  The paper shares
+the methodology employed to develop this project.  This methodology has the
+goals of satisfying Government requirements and adhering as much as possible to
+FLOSS and agile practices~\cite{mockus2002, tosi2015}. Moreover, we discuss
+lessons learned in providing a distributed and collaborative virtual
+environment involving a large undergraduate students team and remote senior
+developers. Finally, we released an innovative platform for helping the
+Brazilian government to apply empirical software development methods. This case
+can help other projects to overcome similar software engineering challenges in
+the future, as well as to illustrate how universities can improve the
+real-world experience of their students.
-The remainder of this work is organized as follows.
-Section \ref{sec:spb}...
-Section \ref{sec:related} enumerates a number of related works on the...
-Section \ref{sec:researchdesign} presents the research design...
-Section \ref{sec:requirements} reports ...
-Section \ref{sec:architecture} ...
-Section \ref{sec:features} ...
-Section \ref{sec:ux} ...
-Section \ref{sec:process} ...
-Section \ref{sec:contributions} ...
-Section \ref{sec:lessons} ...
-Finally, Sections \ref{sec:conclusion} concludes the paper highlighting its
-main contributions and pointing paths to future works.
+The remainder of this work is organized as follows.  Section \ref{sec:spb}
+discusses the concepts of Brazilian Public Software and Free Software.  Section
+\ref{sec:related} enumerates a number of related projects from other countries.
+Section \ref{sec:researchdesign} presents the open questions these guided this
+paper.  Section \ref{sec:requirements} reports how the Brazilian Government
+stakeholders collected the theoretical requirements as well as how we define
+the technological requirements to release an initial version.  Section
+\ref{sec:architecture} shares our decisions about the systems that together
+provided a wide subset of the requirements and our strategy to integrate them.
+Section \ref{sec:features} describes the main features of the new SPB Portal.
+Section \ref{sec:ux} reports the user experience evolution during the
+integration of the selected FLOSS tools.  Section \ref{sec:process} discusses
+our strategies to support the different organizational cultures and to involve
+undergraduate students as protagonists of the development process.  Section
+\ref{sec:contributions} summarizes the contributions to the FLOSS upstream
+communities we interacted with.  Finally, Sections \ref{sec:conclusion}
+concludes the paper highlighting its main contributions, sharing our lessons
+learned, and pointing paths to future works.