Upon Further Investigation...

Since my last post, the A-Team began a deeper investigation into the workings of RapidSMS.  We were primarily looking for information about the inception, history, current work, and primary contributors to this project.  What we found, however, was very little about the inception and history of the HFOSS project. 

In case I had not clarified this before, RapidSMS is a framework for developing data collection and reporting tools using basic text messages.  It is not a stand-alone application.  From our research, this framework seems rather complete.  Most of the current contribution have to do with applications developed on the RapidSMS framework.  Personally, it was interesting and exciting to read about some of the ways RapidSMS has been used and deployed in the world.  Their case studies page has a great summary of how RapidSMS has been tested in the field, primarily in African countries.  There are some other projects beyond these that are currently being developed and which we need to examine further.

We have also been in contact with the manager of the RapidSMS Google Group.  The response was mostly positive.  He was very welcoming and expressed a willingness to help us brainstorm ways that we, as a group of inexperienced students, can contribute to this project - something that I am extremely thankful for.  The only negative really is something inherent to the Open-Source community, specifically that many of the people contributing to the project are either doing this in their spare time or are frantically trying to piece something together for their job, which means we might have to be 'aggressive' in our communications efforts.  This is no surprise, but I sometimes struggle to be aggressive with people I can't see and have never met.  How aggressive can you be when email is your only point of contact?  In spite of that minor discouragement, I find that I am still optimistic about getting involved, especially with the help of the Google Group manager.

I'm excited to start getting to work on the code and exploring, especially after starting to read about subversion!  I was actually amused reading a team-mate's blog because his 'stuck' to start this is the opposite of mine.  My Ubuntu system cannot connect to the school's wireless network, but it can connect to my home network, while his can connect to the school's network, but not his home one.  However, as I am also a full-time military wife, I try to keep my school work at school and take care of home related things at home.  I'm hoping to get help connecting to the school's wireless network this week so that I can keep this distinction for my own sanity, but I may have to make some boundary changes.