Libre Food Pantry was created to help and support local food pantries. Its mission is simple that to bring computer science and its software to enhance and support local needs. This is what I found interesting about Libre Food Pantry. For every piece of software today, the main reason is to profit its developers and organizations rather than to support the community necessity. It’s critical to think of software that created is to assists the needs of the community, not the need of the pocket. As software developers nowadays focus so much on the cash and paybacks that we sometimes forget what our initial intention and mission is. I chose to write about the mission of Libre Food Pantry because I hope that they would keep doing what they’re doing, let aside the business and help expand the community and support the people.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Hung Nguyen by hpnguyen27 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

One thing I found interesting from the reading was the Agile values and principles, and the Twelve Principles of Agile Software. I found this interesting because it puts people and teams before the product, encouraging communication and teamwork over raw productivity. I found this interesting because I would have thought that everything would be based around getting the most productivity, but instead it emphasizes the process and making interaction within the team as smooth as possible. I really like the policy of responding to change rather than following a plan, because even though having a plan is great, sticking with a failing plan is most often a bad idea. I chose to write about this because this stuck out to me as good, common-sense practices that it seems often aren’t used.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Alex's Blog by anelson42 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For my capstone project in CS-448, we are working on the libre food pantry which I have taken a look into the mission, values, code of conduct, etc. I have read about the FOSSisms which provided good information about the opened sourced culture into sixteen parts. Such as, respecting the community and to get in-depth with the community purpose and guideline and whatever to dig up into the project you are interested in. The steps give me more insight on how to go about the open source world. And how to go about it. In step 3, to give community back intrigued me because when we are in a field working on a project we make as much positive contribution as possible to gather answers from others or give answers to others, where it is a positive two communication to continually improve your community.

From the blog cs@worcester – Dahwal Dev by Dahwal Charles and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

As I’ve been engaged with the internet for most of my life, I’m not entirely surprised, but I’m little unsettled by the Code of Conduct/Our Standards of the site. I didn’t realize with such a helpful type of engagement that standards such as these are as important as they seem to be. I suppose I wish this this type of medium was not as aggressive, as it would encourage a better attitude towards the people involved, but I’m familiar with the type of rhetoric people use on the web, and I am disappointed as it is needed to specify a certain type of behavior. I hope it is a failsafe rather than a direct shutdown of awful things that people say, but I understand the logic in case some awful people feel the need to post on the thread.

From the blog CS@worcester – Dummies that Code by howbrash and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The mission statement by Libre food pantry is very similar to my personal life goals. I as well hope to use my computer science knowledge and skills I have obtained towards the betterment of not just humans, but also human society, our standard of living, environment, and planet earth in general.

There is also a false belief among the common masses that people in computer science just have to write their part of code and move on. Therefore, they do not work well with other people or just don’t have to work with other people. Mission statement of Libre food pantry states right from the start that they are a “vibrant, welcoming community of clients, users, and developers” working together as an unit and team to achieve their goals.

From the blog CS@worcester – Towards Tech by murtazan and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

After reading several sections on the LibreFoodPantry website, I found the Code of Conduct to be rather useful. It provides a very clear picture of what is expected and how things are handled in a simple, straightforward way. The page explains in detail what the goal is, what the community standards are, where they apply, how they are enforced, and how the violations are handled. I think it’s very important to understand and be familiar with the culture, values, and standards of the community before being a contributing member. I will try to visit this section every once in awhile to remind myself of what values and practices I should uphold when working on this project.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Fadi Akram by Fadi Akram and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

When reading through the LibreFoodPantry main page looking at the values, specifically the FOSSims, I saw something that intrigued which was Linus’s law and the saying “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”. This phrase indicates that you should not shy away from help when encountering bugs so that they can be fixed easier and quicker and to not end up like those who just bang their head on the wall for hours on end stuck. I chose this since I can relate to have been typically working on fixing bugs myself and spend hours stuck instead of seeking help in certain situations. This is useful to think about and to hopefully convince other people to seek help.

From the blog CS@Worcester – kbcoding by kennybui986 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Something from the LibreFoodPantry’s website that I found interesting was the mission that is listed. This page states that LibreFoodPantry’s mission is to “expand a community of students and faculty across multiple institutions who believe software can be used to help society.” I really like that this mission is centered around bettering our community. I think a lot of modern software projects are focused on comercialization and proffit, and I don’t like that. A software can be a very powerful tool for any cause; I believe that softwares should be designed to help people. I appreciate the oppurtinity to work on a project that has a real impact on the community.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Ciampa's Computer Science Blog by robiciampa and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

After reviewing and reading over the LibreFoodPantry’s main page I found a specific topic that settled a concern that I had about working on an open source project like this. In it’s values page it presents a list of ideals titled FOSSisms, where I found a particular one that I wasn’t expecting. This FOSSism covers how a student like I should handle working on the project and worrying about making mistakes or asking permission to try working with anything. I know that this semester I’ll have tasks already set aside that I need to work on but actually doing it and making a mistake that could break a part of the software itself was overly present on my mind. This FOSSism reassured me that I shouldn’t be too concerned about making that mistake and rather to ask for forgiveness instead of first asking for permission.

From the blog CS@Worcester – A Boolean Not An Or by Julion DeVincentis and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

One thing that I noticed when reading over the LibreFoodPantry code of conduct was how seriously online harassment is taken. I liked how the pantry is a place where people can feel safe to contribute to the project without fear of harassment. The enforcement policy seems extremely fair with many chances for corrective action to be taken.

The pantry enforces their code of conduct across multiple websites and does not tolerate harassment on any platform, including the LibreFoodPantry discord server. I especially like this since there are many organizations who only care about their own platform and do not monitor off-site harassment. This makes LibreFoodPantry a more welcoming environment for all developers and users.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Ryan Blog by rtrembley and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.