Software Selection

About Software Selection

This paper presents a preliminary selction of software which shall be included in LiureX distribution.

Software selection criteria

When reviewing potential software to be included in LliureX distributio, the following criteria have been established:

• Licences: Software licences must follow the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG).For further information on these guidelines, refer to http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines.

  Those licences which guarantee a long-term free software availability , as for example GPL, and which allow further commercial software development integrated in the system (BSD and LGPL licences will prevail over GPL licences for libraries) will be prioritary.

• Software standards fulfillment: user interfaces, file formats, communication protocols, internationalization support, accessibility, etc.

• Stability, safety and upstream support are a must together with a long-term active maintenance and fault free.

• Curriculum software adapted covering some content areas of Infant, Prelimary and Secondary Education.

• Software features adequacy. Neither more nor less features than required as the KISS philosophy (Keep It Simple, Stupid) states .

• Good integration with the already selected software.

• Adequate and sufficient documentation of both user and developer.

• Software development community attitude:

  • Are there good communication channels between developers and users?
  • Is the project already open to further contributions such as patches, translations and so on?
  • Does it have any quality guarantee?
  • Does it provide an error tracking system?
  • Are there well-defined policies for new versions releases?
  • Is the code stored in a Control Version System(cvs, svn...)?

• Users community: community size, help forums and websites, etc.

Desktop Selection

LlliureX distribution seeks to provide the proper tools for the educational community, fact that implies reducing the number of available software set by default.

One of the first selections made is the desktop system. LliureX has chosen the GNOME desktop because of the following reasons:

• LGPL licence.
• Good internalization support (gettext).
• Accessibility support.
• Same desktop in other Spanish distributions.

Applications included in GNOME are preferred since it simplifies maintenance, reduces the amount of software packages to support and, as a consequence, it minimizes library dependencies on our system.