Open Source Software Community benefits from Leap Local's work, & visa versa
At the beginning of 2007, Leap Local invited David Heath to use his valuable experience as a web developer to complete work on our website. Leap has benefited from the Open Source Software (OSS) community by using Joomla! to enable the functionality we required, without the problems of developing software from scratch. Joomla! claims to be one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management System on the planet.
At the beginning of 2007, Leap Local invited David Heath to use his valuable experience as a web developer to complete work on our website. Leap has benefited from the Open Source Software (OSS) community by using Joomla! to enable the functionality we required, without the problems of developing software from scratch. Joomla! claims to be one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management System on the planet. Joomla! has enabled Leap Local to preserve valuable resources since it provides a number of useful extensions that have already been tried and tested. Integrating different programmes can lead to unexpected issues, but David applied cutting-edge automated testing techniques to ensure that everything worked as intended. “Automated testing is the future of software development,” says David, “but it's still not widely used amongst PHP programmers” (PHP is the programming language used by Joomla). David will write an article about his use of automated testing in the Leap Local project, and publish the Joomla testing software he developed under an open source license. He hopes this will help raise awareness of the automated testing amongst Joomla developers.
In addition to Joomla!, Leap has been an active user of Skype and Trac to project manage individuals based around the world. Trac was originally developed by Swedish company Edgewall Software and operated as an open source project with community involvement. It was intended as a tracking system for software development projects, but we have successfully applied it to other projects and organisational functions as well. Without it, communication and action between France, the UK, and Peru would be strained, disjointed and expensive. It also enables everyone involved in Leap to operate in a transparent way, and to offer insight and initiative on a variety of issues.
Our technical advisor Michael Wells comments that ‘Open sourcing code is normally done with a view to getting other people to work on it and progress it. GPL'ing code is altruistic and also tends to help good ideas emerge when they could not otherwise compete commercially.’ Leap Local is pleased to have enabled this work and offer something back to the OSS community which has helped us fast track our web development. Because this we are already having regular inputs of information on local guides and services in Peru and Bolivia by and for travellers. This is another milestone towards achieving our goal of making it possible for travel to benefit local communities, and helping travellers have a more complete and cultural experience.
We also want to say thanks to David! His dedication, professional approach and initiative have been invaluable to Leap.
David Heath Bio (www.davidheath.org )
Freelance software developer, business analyst and consultant. David's interests are agile software development, open source software and outcomes focused business analysis. David has extensive experience in the not for profit sector, including with OneWorld.net where he worked for many years as Senior Developer and more recently for, CAFOD, SCIAF, WACC, Amnesty International. He holds a first class degree in Computer Science from Cambridge University.
David is currently taking a sabbatical in Lyon, France where he has been learning French and to play the accordion. He will be returning to the UK later this year to join the Appropriate Software Foundation.
Joomla! - go to www.joomla.org
General Public License (GPL)- go to www.gnu.org
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