Using Free/Libre/Open Source for Software Engineering Education Christina Chavez 1 , Antonio Terceiro 1 , Paulo Meirelles 2 , Carlos Santos Jr. 2 , Fabio Kon 2 1 Software Engineering Labs Department of Computer Science - IM Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Brazil {flach, terceiro}@dcc.ufba.br 2 FLOSS Competence Center Department of Computer Science - IME University of S˜ ao Paulo (USP), Brazil {paulormm, denner, fabio.kon}@ime.usp.br Abstract. Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) presents a strategy for de- veloping software products that is substantially different from what is usually taught in Software Engineering courses. This paper discusses the benefits of using FLOSS in Software Engineering Education, proposes a list of topics that should be covered in FLOSS-based Software Engineering courses, and briefly reports our experience at two Brazilian universities. 1. Introduction Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) 1 represents a change in the way software is designed, constructed and evolved. In the last decades we have witnessed FLOSS projects become increasingly important in society: Apache HTTPD omnipresence in the web server environment; the increasing market share obtained by Firefox, despite the fact that its main competitor comes pre-installed with the large majority of personal computers sold; Eclipse large penetration in Software Engineering (SE) research. Most FLOSS projects are developed in the open: the source code is public, there are mailing lists for discussions between developers, the bug tracking systems are avail- able, and usually there is a documentation website where beginners can learn about how to get started with development in the project. This environment opens up a lot of op- portunities for Software Engineering Education (SEE). Thus, top international forums such as the Software Engineering Education track at ICSE (SEE&T), the Academy for Software Engineering Education and Training (ASEE&T), and the Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) have been discussing how to take advantage of such opportunities. To investigate ongoing initiatives from the Brazilian SEE community on the use of FLOSS, we performed an study on the papers from FEES (F´ orum de Educac ¸˜ ao em Engenharia de Software), the Brazilian forum co-located with SBES (Brazilian Sympo- sium on Software Engineering), that brings together researchers interested in SEE since 1 In this work, we use the terms “Free Software”,“Open Source Software” (OSS), “Free/Open Source Software” (FOSS), and “Free/Libre/Open Source Software” (FLOSS) as if they were equivalent. Thus, we decided to use the broader acronym “FLOSS”.