RFS: opus (Online university Placement System)
Dear Mentors,
I am looking for a sponsor for my package "opus" (and uuwaf, see later).
* Package name : opus
Version : 4.0.2-1
Upstream Author : Colin Turner <c.turner@ulster.ac.uk>
* URL : http://foss.ulster.ac.uk/projects/opus
* License : GPL v2
Section : web
It builds these binary packages:
opus - On-line Placement University System
opus-doc - On-line Placement University System Documentation
The package appears to be lintian clean.
The package can be found on mentors.debian.net:
- URL: http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/o/opus
- Source repository: deb-src http://mentors.debian.net/debian unstable
main contrib non-free
- dget http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/o/opus/opus_4.0.2-1.dsc
Since advice on mentors.debian.net encourages more information, here it is.
OPUS is a system for schools, colleges, universities etc. to manage work
based learning (also known as co-ops, placements etc.). The formal
description is:
---
OPUS is a comprehensive web based tool for managing all aspects of
placement. It is aimed at Universities and other large institutions, and
facilitates engagement from employers, academic staff, administrative
staff and students.
It allows companies to place adverts for students, for students to post
applications with CVs, as well as providing facilities for assessing
students while on placement. Information is made available on-line to
all placement stakeholders.
---
The application has been in development (by me, the upstream author) for
around 5-6 years now, and has been free software for over a year, and it
installed in a number of institutions, some of which make use of the
existing unofficial Debian packaging used up to now. In fact, Debian is
the recommended installation route for users, and several have installed
both Debian and OPUS with no prior GNU/Linux knowledge.
The application is written in PHP (5+), and depends upon a framework we
are developing here at the University of Ulster [1] (see an upcoming
message), which is thus far very light, but it does require important
security precautions for PHP (register_globals and magic_quotes off for
example, and uses the PDO database layer to help prevent SQL injection).
OPUS also uses a variety of other security techniques such as validation
of user input by casting and regular expressions were appropriate, and
the changing of session numbers on authentication to prevent session
fixation attacks. [2]
Some minor backend functionality, associated with command line cron
functionality in OPUS uses perl.
The ITP (#415241) has been filed for some time (over a year), since I
decided to wait till I finished the new upstream version (4) before
official packaging since that version brought many improvements in the
ability to localize the system. At that time I also filed an ITP for a
sister product pdsystem [4], but upstream (my colleague is not ready
yet), and a final ITP was filed for the common framework for the two
(and other) applications [5].
The package has been checked with lintian and seems clean, and I have
checked with pbuilder that it will build correctly against a sid chroot.
I intend to start the path to Debian Maintainer and eventually Debian
Developer status to support both this package and the project better. A
DD (noodles) has very kindly helped me improve my initial unofficial
packaging greatly, but is unwilling to sponsor a PHP project, but I wish
to acknowledge his help. My public key is signed by a DD (noodles again).
I would be glad if someone uploaded this package for me.
Kind regards
Colin Turner
[1] http://foss.ulster.ac.uk/projects/uuwaf
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_fixation
[3] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=415241
[4] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=415243
[5]http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=471561
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