Frequently Asked Questions |
It depends on your profile :
Role What you can do Journalist/writer
- Discuss the project business requirements on the project domain list
- Become a stakeholder for the journalist community
- Talk about, write articles about the project
UFO investigator
- Discuss the project business requirements on the project domain list
- Become a stakeholder for the UFO investigators community
Witness
- Discuss the project business requirements on the project domain list
- Become a stakeholder for the witness community
Scientists
- Discuss the project business requirements on the project domain list
- Become a stakeholder for the scientits community
UFO Amateurs
- Discuss the project business requirements on the project domain list
- Talk about the project in UFO lists
- Become a stakeholder for the UFO amateurs community
Webmaster
- Discuss the project business requirements on the project domain list
- Support the project by adding a link to the project website
UFO Organizations
- Become a stakeholder for the UFO organizations community
Producers/ editors
- Become a stakeholder for the producers/ editors community
Software engineer/ developer/ consultant
- Discuss the project technical requirements on the project developers list
- Design/develop some parts of the project software
The project is not proprietary. It does not - and will not - belong to any particular people or organization. This is because we aim to build standards and tools for the UFO community as a whole. This is guaranted by the Open Source license of the product.
Open Source means that the source code of the software will be available to anyone. Anyone is allowed to use it, modify it or even sell it - but that's not the problem of the project - freely. It also means that you'll be able to check/read what the source code really does (i.e. it's neither a spyware nor a virus, etc.)
The project is yours. The more you get involved, the more it will fit your needs, and the more it will avoid what you want to avoid for such a project. The project cannot be successful if it doesn't fit its user's needs. Feel free to register to a project mailing list — rr0-domain for the ufology aspect of the project, rr0-developers for the technical aspect, etc. — to discuss the project.
The project is free. It is not funded, and working efforts are not reimbursed. However, the results will always freely available to the public - including UFO people or UFO organizations - for whatever way others can use it. A Reference Implementation will be made available to the public.
This is quite difficult to predict in an Open Source project, where the work rate depends on the number of contributors, and contributors' available time. So it may take one year or five, it depends on your will to work on it.
The project will be finished, whatever the "ups & downs". Aside from the dominant interest (an important step for ufology) is the technical interest for a bunch of software engineers. So UFO@home is a double challenge.
UFO@home (pronounce "UFO at home") represents the ability for anybody to testify, browse and work on UFO material from home, through an Internet connection. As the SETI@home project — that has no relationship with this project — which inspired the project's name, it may also allow in the future some computation (statistical analysis for instance) distributed on multiple UFO@home servers.
RR0 is the name of the website that initiated the project, which first took the name "UFO@home" (RR0 Information System), before being called "UFO@home". So you can see "rr0" sometimes, as the historical codename of the project.
Several people with business/domain (ufology experts) and technical (software engineers), but any people is welcomed to contribute, ask questions, give its opinion or work on any aspect of the project.
The UFO@home project aims to develop a tool to help to study the UFO phenomenon more efficiently, not to conclude on this phenomenon (this is the job of ufologists who will use this tool) and so has no opinion on the phenomenon itself. It just recognize the phenomenon as real, with a potential scientifique interest, but does not conclude on any explanation for this phenomenon. It does not reject any hypothesis, and aims to allow every people (defenders of PSH, ETH, etc.) to work on the same data, but with their own methodologies.
Any organization is welcomed to contribute to the project. However it cannot belong to any organization in particular. It intend to provide a tool for all people and organizations interested in ufology.
An Open Source Software is described as copyleft, because it aims to grant the users the rights to use, redistribute, and modify the software at their own will. On the contrary of software without licence (from public domain, which doesn't impose any restrictions nor any liberties), a copyright allows to enforce those liberties.
As stated in the license, the fact that the copyright is "Jérôme Beau" (founder of de RR0.org) doesn't have any impact on the rights to use, distribute, modify, or even sell the software with such an Open Source license. It is just d'une reconnaissance de l'auteur de l'initiative. Par la suite si une entité organisationnelle se créait pour gérer UFO@home, le copyright serait au nom de cette entité (il est diffile d'envisager une association ufologique existante afin de ne pas donner au projet une couleur partisane).
The project started in french, launched by a french ufological static website. The project is now being translated into english continuously.
The RR0.org static website will continue to evolve in parallel to UFO@home. Once UFO@home achieved and the whole set of data migrated from RR0.org to UFO@home, the static website will be deprecated and may disapear.
This website is about the project, not the end-user product. However, as the product, it can be changed. Nothing is imutable in the project, and all remarks are welcomed.
No. UFO@home aims to define standards and software APIs that will allow any database to provide the UFO@home goals : automated and efficient sighting input, data processing, and investigation follow-up.
No. UFO@home defines standards that can be applied on existing data storages. Many of such UFO@home compatibles databases can co-exist on the Internet, and collaborate together. UFO@home neither intend to hide or dissolve data sources such as UFO organisations or people (except witnesses that want to remain anonymous). Data sources are a critical part of the information (regarding credibility, and so on).
UFO@home will not select data. Every people will be allowed to post its own data, but every people will also be allowed to filter such data with the criteria of their choice ("not from that source(s)", "from only that source(s)", "only validated by this UFO organization", etc. for instances).