In March 2006, David A. Patterson wrote an article entitled "Computer science education in the 21st century." David A. Patterson was, at the time, the president of the Association for Computer Machinery, the world's largest educational and scientific computing society. In this article — which, sadly, you cannot read unless you are an ACM member — he advocated for fundamental changes to how computer science is taught. One of the changes to the standard undergraduate computer science curriculum that he advocated for was the inclusion of courses in open sourcesoftwaredevelopment.

One might think that such a clarion call, made by someone of such obvious influence, would generate a groundswell of enthusiasm. When the president of the ACM proclaims that it is "time to teach open source development," the world of academia must certainly follow, yes?

It's a little more complicated than that.

We've spent a lot of time over the past few years talking to computer science professors. Mostly we've asked lots of questions -- actually, the same ones over and over.

For these last two, the follow-up question is, invariably, "why not?"

And the answer is, invariably, "because it's hard."

There are good reasons why professors don't teach the practice of open source. It's easy for open source advocates to explain away these reasons. At a certain point, though, one must accept the idea that most professors are well-intentioned, but bound by circumstances that make it frustratingly difficult to introduce students to open source development.

So why bother?

The answer is simple: the skills required to succeed in an open source software project are the exact same skills required to succeed in any large software project. The biggest difference is that, with just a bit of guidance, anyone can build their software skills in the open source world.

We hope that this textbook helps provide that guidance to a whole generation of students.