An undergraduate course for FOSS and with FOSS

Many universities have incorporated free and open-source software (FOSS) into undergraduate courses, though few research efforts have specifically investigated the interactions between undergraduates and real-world FOSS projects. In this paper, we present our experience of participating in the development of real-world FOSS projects, dealing with the challenges caused by COVID-19, and the feasibility of remote education with FOSS only. Our experience shows that undergraduates and FOSS projects can help each other well. Moreover, we summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the existing FOSS communities in attracting undergraduates and provide some suggestions. © 2021 Association for Computing Machinery.

Analysis of a COVID-19 compartmental model: a mathematical and computational approach.

In this note, we consider a compartmental epidemic mathematical model given by a system of differential equations. We provide a complete toolkit for performing both a symbolic and numerical analysis of the spreading of COVID-19. By using the free and open-source programming language Python and the mathematical software SageMath, we contribute for the reproducibility of the mathematical analysis of the stability of the equilibrium points of epidemic models and their fitting to real data. The mathematical tools and codes can be adapted to a wide range of mathematical epidemic models.