FLOSS Body of Knowledge

As courses, certificates, and curricula are created, it’s valuable to bring together people who are working to develop and deliver this material into a community where we can jointly define a central body of knowledge related to free, libre, and open source software. That goal has led me to take the first step toward creating this body of knowledge, termed FLOSSBOK. The initial outline, intentionally very brief, can be found on our FLOSS Competency Center site.

The FLOSSBOK concept is based on a similar project, known as SWEBOK, sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society, that was used to develop a body of knowledge for software engineering. The SWEBOK project is now more than a decade old and in its third revision. It’s easy to see that the FLOSSBOK effort has a long way to go to match the extensive content found in that document. While I have some significant disagreements with the SWEBOK content, it’s important to notice that there is a sizeable community around that project.

As with any other open source project, FLOSSBOK must develop its own community to thrive and to create useful content. While the effort can start with the Education Committee of the OSI and with the leaders of various FLOSS Competency Centers, long term success depends on attracting people to the project and getting them to contribute their knowledge and experience to it. Please let others know about FLOSSBOK so that we may build up a useful document that can help more people to become knowledgeable about free, libre, and open source software.