<http://www.rmll.info/conf_124>

Nancy, France, July 6, 6006

Large software systems management (LSSM) has always been a stimulating
challenge for the research field in Computer Science known as Software
Engineering.

Nevertheless, in the recent years, two related phenomena : the explosion
of Internet connectivity and the mainstream adoption of free software,
have deeply changed the scenarii that today’s software engineers face.
The traditional organized, safe world where software is developed from
specifications in a fully centralized way is no longer the only game in
town. We see more and more complex software systems that are assembled
from loosely coupled sources developed by programming teams not
belonging to any single company, cooperating only through fast Internet
connections. The availability of code distributed under free software
licences makes it possible to reuse such code without formal agreements
among companies, and without any form of central authority that
coordinates this burgeoning activity.

This has led to the appearance of the so-called distribution editors,
who try to offer some kind of reference viewpoint over the breathtaking
variety of free software available today : they take care of packaging,
integrating and distributing tens of thousands of software packages,
very few being developed in-house and almost all coming from independent
developers. We believe that the role of distribution editors is deeply
novel : no comparable task can be found in the traditional software
development and distribution model.

As free software continues to grow, the free software landscape become
increasingly complex, and we need to invent new tools and find new ideas
to second its growth.

This workshop aims to bring together developers, package maintainers,
distribution editors, computer scientists and all the people interested
in ensuring that creating, using and disseminating free software will be
able to scale up over the next years.

Topics of interest include but are not restricted to :

- Package management tools
- Dependency checking
- Package formats
- Package quality assurance
- Software testing frameworks
- Efficient software distribution and event notification system
- Free Software Distributions process management
- Free software process modelling and measurement
- Experiences from Linux Distribution Editors
- Use cases, best practices
- Technical presentation of research topics and R&D projects related to
LSSM

Each proposal for a conference session should contain the following
information :

- The title of the presentation.
- An abstract of the presentation.
- For each speaker, the speaker name, title, company, professional
street and email addresses, phone and fax numbers. Addresses, phone and
fax numbers are for organization purposes only and will not be
distributed to third parties without prior agreement.
- A short biography of the proposed speaker(s) showing relevant
experience and qualification to speak on the proposed subject matter
(not to exceed 300 words).

Submissions should be written in French or English. Presentations are to
be delivered in French or English and will last 45 minutes.

Important dates :

- Abstract submission : by May 30, 2006. Please send your submission to
edos-rmll at pps.jussieu.fr
- July 6, 2006 : LSSM Workshop
- July 4-8, 2006 : RMLL