From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id UAA24895; Thu, 2 Sep 2004 20:53:16 +0200 (MET DST) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id UAA25126 for ; Thu, 2 Sep 2004 20:53:10 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from mwinf0107.wanadoo.fr (smtp1.wanadoo.fr [193.252.22.30]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id i82Ir9Pw012871 for ; Thu, 2 Sep 2004 20:53:09 +0200 Received: from me-wanadoo.net (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mwinf0107.wanadoo.fr (SMTP Server) with SMTP id 981781800046; Thu, 2 Sep 2004 20:53:09 +0200 (CEST) Received: from morgana (ARennes-303-1-14-227.w81-49.abo.wanadoo.fr [81.49.249.227]) by mwinf0107.wanadoo.fr (SMTP Server) with ESMTP id 2362C18000AF; Thu, 2 Sep 2004 20:53:09 +0200 (CEST) Received: from david by morgana with local (Exim 4.34) id 1C2whi-00028o-PS; Thu, 02 Sep 2004 20:53:02 +0200 To: caml-list@inria.fr Cc: demexp-dev@nongnu.org, demexp-en@ras.eu.org Subject: [Caml-list] The demexp project is looking for OCaml developers From: David MENTRE Organization: none Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 20:53:02 +0200 Message-ID: <87vfew7bap.fsf@linux-france.org> User-Agent: Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) Emacs/21.3 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Miltered: at nez-perce with ID 41376C15.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Loop: caml-list@inria.fr X-Spam: no; 0.00; dmentre:01 gpl:01 gerd:01 delegates:01 ramsey's:01 noweb:01 versionning:01 dmentre:01 2004:99 2004:99 02.:99 gpl:01 implemented:01 dialogs:01 glade:01 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk Hello, This is a call for developers. In short ======== The demexp project is a free software project (GNU GPL) that aims at making the software needed to start the democratic experience project. The democratic experience is a large scale project of direct democracy. It aims at providing the tools to facilitate the expression of all citizens, to transform this expression into decisions, and to apply this decision. After one year of development, we feel the need of help to reach as soon as possible a working prototype. So we are looking for OCaml developers that would be interested in helping us. Beyond its political objectives, this project is interesting from a computer science point of view because it touches a wide range of subjects, from networking to user interfaces, through cryptography, databases, graphs, logical search systems, etc. Of course, demexp is written in OCaml. Links: http://www.demexp.org http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/demexp More on the democratic experience project ========================================= The democratic experience is a large scale project of direct democracy. It aims at providing the tools to facilitate the expression of all citizens, to transform this expression into decisions, and to apply this decision. In the democratic experience, each participant can submit a question, propose answers, and vote. All winning answers to the votes are gathered into a database that represents the common position of the group. This common position can be used to drive decisions. Thus, the democratic experience is a complete and open tool for direct democracy. It can apply to small groups of people (associations, companies) but also to larger groups (countries, the planet!). For more information: http://www.demexp.org Technical description of the demexp software ============================================ The demexp software is a kind of client-server voting software. The server stores a database of questions and their associated responses and the clients are allowed to vote on those responses. The communication between client and server is made using RPC (thanks to Gerd Stolpmann's RPC package). The server implements a Condorcet voting procedure to resolve votes into taken positions. Demexp is however different of most voting software, because it fulfils the requirements of the democratic experience project. For example, clients are allowed to change their vote at anytime. People can also delegates their vote to another participant. We want to make a good software so we try to adhere to good software engineering practices. For example, the code is developed in literate programming style using Norman Ramsey's noweb tool. Each module has non-regression tests. The versionning tool used is GNU Arch. The main demexp repository is at: dmentre@linux-france.org--2004-code http://www.linux-france.org/~dmentre/arch-ive/ The latest source tarball is available at: http://www.linux-france.org/~dmentre/demexp/latest-src/ You'll find a example of the server source code in literate style at: http://www.linux-france.org/~dmentre/demexp/demexp-server-book-2004-09-02.pdf The technical website for development is on Savannah: http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/demexp (WARNING: the CVS repository on Savannah is NOT up-to-date) The demexp software is licensed under GNU GPL. What is the current state of demexp? ==================================== Demexp is not vaporware. We have started about one year ago the development of the demexp project. However, due to low manpower and the complexity of the software, we have not yet reached a demonstration prototype. At first, we wanted to have a working prototype before calling other people but it appears the task is harder than we expected. Right now, we have implemented on the server: - repository of questions, responses and participants (as OCaml data structures); - condorcet voting; - classification of questions; - networking. On the client side, we have just a set of windows and dialogs in Glade format that compiles into lablgtk2 code. Both are working on Linux. We would like to reach the following objectives: * v0.4: basic client and server; saving of server bases in XML format; * v0.6: handling of delegation, internationalization (of both software and the questions themselves), port to various architectures (Windows, Mac OS X, other Unix); * v0.8: proper handling of security issues, mainly related to vote peculiarities (very hard task!! we're looking for experts) * v1.0: scalability issues, use of real databases, integration of logical search system into the client, etc. There is a lot of interesting issues for the future: replication of bases, information forum, integration of demexp in other softwares, formal proving of algorithms and protocols, ... We are looking for OCaml developers in all areas but we are especially interested by people wanting to develop LablGTK2 software interface. How can I contribute? ===================== Just join the demexp-dev mailing list and let us know in what part you are interested: http://savannah.nongnu.org/mail/?group=demexp If you have further questions, do not hesitate to ask me. We hope to have your help. We have a lot of interesting issues for you. ;) Have a nice day, Yours, david -- on behalf of the democratic experience project -- David Mentré ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners