A fact from Christiane Floyd appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 8 March 2016 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that Christiane Floyd was the first female professor of computer science in Germany?
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Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion
The Article claims (with a source) that Participatory Design, as Floyd practiced it, is a precursor to the Open Source movement ("…evolutionary participatory software design—a precursor to open-source software development"). I think the claim is mistaken, since Floyd’s STEPS method assumes different roles of users and developers whereas in open source, the user and developer are, ideally, the same person (e.g. Raymond’s "6. Treating your users as co-developers…". I thus suggest to remove the claim or will do so myself. -- Simulo (talk) 11:06, 30 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
"Mistaken" seems a bit far—the claim is not that they are the same thing, but that STEPS was a precursor or forerunner to OSSD. I don't see STEPS as mandating separate roles for users and developers, more blurring the lines between them and giving each party involvement in the process and insight into each other's practices. Likewise with Eric Raymond's notion of the user and developer being the same person—sure, that is great, ideal even, but it's not mandatory either, or definitive of open source development. Regardless of any conceptual differences between the STEPS and OSSD processes (and I'm sure there are many), they surely still have enough in common that one can be considered a forerunner or precursor to the other, even if not necessarily a direct ancestor. The claim has at least two references [1][2] which state the connection quite clearly (albeit in German). Comparing Floyd et al's paper and an idea from Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar to deny any connection or similarity is a bit too much synthesis for my liking, and I would prefer you did not remove the statement based on that rationale alone. However, if there is consensus from other editors that your suggestion is sound, that would be fine to remove or reword it. --Canley (talk) 12:13, 30 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
I support your suggestion. Looking at the original source from "Die ZEIT" (2011) it seems the author mixed up "Agile Software Development" with "Open Source". Curiously an older article in the same newspaper (1992) did not (see last paragraph of [3]). The apparent mistake of the 2011 articles becomes even more clear when looking at a recent article of "Die ZEIT" from 2020 - here the author connects Floyd's work on STEPS with agile working, no mentioning of Open Source (see [4] - behind pay wall, URL gives a hint though). 46.88.92.86 (talk) 12:51, 16 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
Hmm, that's interesting. Does the 2020 Die ZEIT article specifically link STEPS to Agile or Floyd herself? I've found some references which link Floyd's Outline of a Paradigm Change in Software Engineering and other work to Agile software development, but as far as I can see the first article doesn't mention either OSSD or ASD, and her links to Agile don't seem to mention STEPS. --Canley (talk) 23:15, 16 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
The 2020 Die Zeit article linkes Agile to Floyd's work in general: "Floyd developed a revolutionary idea of software development in the eighties. (...) Floyd pleads for the development of programs in cycles and the involvement of users from the very beginning. (...) Today Floyd's methods have long been recognized. Even more: "Agile working" is one of the most influential management principles of recent years. (...) "Christiane was a pioneer of agile methods," says Floyd's former post-doctoral researcher, Hamburg professor Ingrid Schirmer.".79.192.162.226 (talk) 07:28, 8 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
