Homework #5

University of Illinois

CS329

Linux-Wifi Group

 

Group Members:

David Bowen                Kabe Vanderbaan

Michael Walsh              Isaac Sanchez  

Vivek Thakkar              Faisal Sal Razzaq

Ryan Gordon                Srinivas Kattragadda

 

 

Note1: The items that we actually implemented in the transition plan are marked with red color and the status of responses is shown in green color.

Note2: As of 05/11/2003, 38 interested parties have already downloaded software.

 

 

Linux-Wifi Software Transition Plan

 

 To Attract Developers:

  1. JXTA allows software to communicate securely with peers across public networks.
  2. Using JXTA, software can find peers and resources on the network even across firewalls.
  3. JXTA is a fast growing technology.  Many large corporations have begun development efforts.
  4. JXTA is the only open source, standards-based technology that supports
    collaboration and communication on any networked device anywhere, anytime.
  5. JXTA is available for embedded devices.
  6. We released the Linux-Wifi project under the GNU General Public License (GPL).  We chose this option because we want to freely distribute our creative work for others to use, modify, and improve.

-                The GNU General Public License can be found at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.php

          Status: DONE

  1. JXTA allows for peer-to-peer communication in a closed system, allowing for both secure corporate use and private personal use – one can set up a network in a home or private community setting.
  2. Link to a download page for most current version of code as well as instructions to build and use the software.

    Status: DONE

  1. Link to mailing list so developers and quickly find what features still need to be added/improved.

    Status: DONE

  2. Having a large user community will influence developers to become involved with JXTA and our software.
  3. Tap into resources available through the team members’ current employers.

-                Post advertisements for the software on the company’s news group or in the company newsletter.

-                Sponsor pizza development days.  Existing developers of our software pay for pizza and invite/recruit new developers.

 

Creative ways to promote (assuming budget of $0):

  1. When going to a music concert, paint yourself with slogans promoting Linux-Wifi.
  2. Bring a Linux-Wifi sign to a baseball game.  Acquire seats behind home plate so it will be on TV a lot.
  3. Hand out information at a booth at quad day to interested students. (Need to be on campus)
  4. Convince senior design groups to help with development for their project. (Need to be on campus)
  5. Send “popup” messages on other music sharing applications.
  6. Ask Winamp and similar organizations to provide us with advertisements during their software download.  (This will not be implemented if these companies charge for the advertising)
  7. Email friends and acquaintances persuading them to try the software.   If they like it, they should spread the word about how cool it is.  This is a good way to build grassroots support for our software. 

        Comments: Sent email to friends and colleagues

        Status: AWAITING RESPONSE  

  8. Offer low cost rewards to users selected at random. 

-                An example of this is a contest that gives away a gift certificate to a restaurant, movie theater, clothing store, etc.

-                This would require us to go over our $0 budget, so this option will be implemented as a last resort.

 

To Attract a User Community:

1.  JXTA.org

-         The JXTA.org website is the main site for JXTA technology

-         There are many documents, tutorial, and source code examples for people interested in JXTA peer-to-peer technology to download.

-         We will attempt to persuade the administrators of the JXTA site to link directly to our download site on SourceForge.net.

-         Alternatively, we can post messages in the discussion groups on this site describing our software and providing the download link on SourceForge.net.

 

2.  Other Peer-to-Peer Sites

-         Post messages on their discussion groups “selling” the idea of our software and providing the link to SourceForge.net

-         Popular peer-to-peer sites include:

 1.) napstermp3.com 

 2.) zeropaid.com

 3.) slyck.com

 

3.  Freeware Sites

-         Submit the online forms to the following sites in order to list our software for free download.

-         These sites would enhance our presence beyond the developer market, which frequent SourceForge.  The freeware sites cater to users who probably would not normally search for open source software available for download on SourceForge.

-         CNET.com is the most popular site we found, however it charges a $79 listing fee per software product or update to an existing software listing.

-         Many alternative freeware sites that we plan on submitting listing forms to do not charge a listing fee.  Instead these sites require us to post a link to them on our software’s website.  These include:

1.)  superfiles.com

2.)  freewarefiles.com

3.)  freewareweb.com

4.)  freewarejava.com

        Comments: Created links to these sites in our webpage and sent an email to them to link to ours.

        Status: AWAITING RESPONSE

 

4.   Traditional Advertising

-         Because of our limited budget ($0) and the distributed nature of our team, we have decided not to pursue traditional advertisement. 

-         This software could have a global audience, which makes online advertising methods more efficient for reaching this larger group of developers and users.

 

5.  Informing User’s about Updates to Software

-         We plan to use the mailing list feature available from SourceForge.

-         Sourceforge.net allows us to set up more than one mailing list so we can separate the user list from the developer list.

-         The users will only get emails about new releases of the software.

-         These emails will discuss new features and enhancements to the software, as well as bugs from previous versions that have been fixed.

 

Software’s Website

1.      Create a cascading style sheet to improve the look of our website and ensure that the visuals will be consistent across all of our web pages.

        Status: DONE

 

2.  Features/Future additions to excite users

-         Auto-drive feature to automatically synchronize user's files over the
Internet.

-         Peer-to-peer architecture is not reliant on a centralized server.

-         Peer-to-peer restrictions to limit who you share with.

-         Possible commercial applications since can run over a private internal
network.

-         We need to highlight these features on our website

 

3.  Where are we going to locate our software’s website that can serve as its permanent home?

-         The LinuxWifi project has 100MB of web server space on SourceForge.

-         This is the most logical home for our software because this web site space is free to open source projects.

-         The URL is:  http://linux-p2p-wifi.sourceforge.net/

        Comments: Created this public web page as intended.

        Status: DONE

 

4.  How will our users be able to ask questions?

-         We have a user forum setup on SourceForge called “Help.”

-         The users may enter questions in the forum.

-         A team member will be assigned to monitor the forum.  If other users of the software do not answer questions, we will answer them.  We assume initially that a team member will answer all questions posted on the forum.

-         The URL is:  http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=225626

        Comments: This is already part of having an account with sourceforge when project is registered.

        Status: DONE