I just noticed a request for professors to let you know when their students are joining the OOo projects.
I teach courses in software testing at Florida Tech (Florida Tech students) and through Kaner/Fiedler Associates (you'll see students from companies coming through us, such as, currently, Progressive Insurance). One of each of these classes is actively working with OOo right now. These are the BBST courses, which the Association for Software Testing and Arizona State also teach. Other places teach them too, but those are the groups that I know currently follow my suggestion to work on OpenOffice. Students in these classes review two unconfirmed bugs each, posting comments on the OOo database that are intended to help you confirm or reject a bug. They also write evaluations of the communication quality of the bug reports, which our class sees but your bug reporters don't see (some of the evaluations are unflattering; there is no value in insulting volunteers by publicly critiquing their reports). If you're curious, I can send you a copy of the assignment. I generally teach two university courses and 2-3 corporate courses per year. ASU teaches, I think, two courses. If you wanted to encourage this, the best support you could give us would be to confirm or reject bugs quickly after we studied them, or to post comments on the bug that followed up on our notes (e.g. asked additional questions). If you are happy to give this kind of fast feedback, I could send you a list of the volunteers on your project who are willing to be identified to you as our students (privacy laws require me to get their permission). Cordially Cem Kaner, JD., Ph.D. www.kaner.com Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Tech
