The Free Technology Academy is closed. To know why, and what may come next, please read here. To find and download FTA resources not listed in these pages, instead, please visit the Free Technology Academy File Archive! Thanks!

University Rey Juan Carlos joins FTA Associate Network

The Free Technology Academy is proud to announce the incorporation of the University Rey Juan Carlos (Spain) to its Associate Partner Network, through the participation of the LibreSoft research group.

One of the main research topics at the LibreSoft group is the quantitative measurement of Free Software development patterns and characteristics in order to gain knowledge on the development process, mainly by studying the different agents that participate in it, the use of development and development-supporting tools and the methods used.

LibreSoft offers a Master Programme on Free Software that leads to an official Master Degree by the URJC with two editions, one in Galicia and, since this year, one in Madrid.

The leader of the research team and renowned Free Software hacker, Jesús M. González-Barahona, explains:

"The FTA initiative allows us to share and build together with other universities working in similar fields. 'Free Technology' is a wide field where diverse approaches and perspectives can co-exist and complement each other. We want to collaborate with the FTA in order to enable that diversity."

The URJC LibreSoft group will contribute courses like Quality Assessment of Free Software, one of its main research topics, to the FTA programme. Apart from that, the LibreSoft group is involved in the taskforce for an International Master Programme in Free Software, where FTA partners cooperate to design a common curriculum.

FTA founding director Wouter Tebbens about LibreSoft/URJC:

"LibreSoft members have been contributing to the FTA in many ways for a long time. Several of their members are authors of FTA course books and Jesús M. González-Barahona is a member of the Scientific Council from the beginning. We share the principles of cooperation, free software and free knowledge and it is a great honour and pleasure to work more closely together."

LibreSoft researchers Jesús M. González-Barahona, Joaquín Seoane Pascual and Gregorio Robles are the authors of the FTA course book "Introduction to Free Software". Its development was coordinated by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and has been in use at that university for several years in Spanish and Catalan. It was later translated into English by the SELF Project and the FTA. The use of a copyleft license enabled this cooperation from scratch and continues to protect the freedoms of users and teachers around the world.

About the Free Technology Academy

A Consortium formed by the Open University of Catalonia (Spain), the Open University of the Netherlands and the University of Agder (Norway) and led by the Free Knowledge Institute (FKI), the FTA has received the support from the EC's Lifelong Learning Programme to set up an international educational programme on Free Software. The courses are taught completely online in a virtual campus based on the Campus Project interoperability framework.

Following the Open Educational Resources movement, all learning materials are freely available through the Internet. The use of Free Software (also referred to as Open Source software or Libre Software) is rapidly expanding in governmental and private organisations. However, still only a limited number of ICT professionals, teachers and decision makers have sufficient knowledge and expertise in these new fields. The Free Technology Academy aims to address this gap by providing high level courses that fit into larger Master Programmes at the participating universities.

Registrations for the first term of the 2011 programme are still open! You can register for these courses until January 3rd, don't leave it for the last minute!

About the University Rey Juan Carlos

The Rey Juan Carlos University (Spanish: Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, URJC) is a public university located in Madrid (Spain). It was created in 1996 and has the Latin motto Non nova, sed nove ("Not new things, but in a new way"). It is the most modern of the six public universities in the Autonomous Community of Madrid, provides teaching for some 25,000 students on four different campuses. The University's commitment to teaching and research excellence and its collaboration with industry and business, combined with superb facilities and a marked international profile make the URJC a point of reference among Spain's universities as they face the challenges of the 21st century. The URJC is fully committed to undertaking academic research as is evidenced by its own initiative to offer incentives to increase scientific output. The Centre for Innovation, Technology and Knowledge Transfer (CINTTEC) has been commissioned to manage and further technological development at the University, encouraging the transfer of science and technology to industry, while the Technology Support Centre (CAT) makes its facilities available to academic teaching staff, researchers and local firms.

Libresoft offers Software Engineering scientists the possibility not only of having a closer look at the product that is being created, but also of studying in detail the whole development process and its technical, social and economic consequences. The main research topic is the quantitative measurement of libre software development patterns and characteristics in order to gain knowledge on the process, mainly by studying the different agents that participate in it, the use of the different development and development-supporting tools as well as the methods that have been followed.