Call for Open Source Software Competition

(Submission closed)

Overview
After several years of success, the Open-Source Software Competition is now an integral part of the ACM Multimedia program. ACM Multimedia 2012 will feature the ninth competition. It is mainly intended to celebrate and encourage the contribution of researchers, software developers and educators to advance the field by providing the community with implementations of codecs, middleware, frameworks, toolkits, libraries, multimedia players, applications, authoring tools, and other multimedia software.

To qualify for the ACM Multimedia Open-Source Software Competition, software must be provided with source code and licensed in such a manner that it can be used free of charge in academic and research settings. For the competition, the software will be built from the sources. All source code, license, installation instructions and other documentation must be available on a public web page. Dependencies on non-open source third-party software are discouraged with the exception of operating systems and commonly found commercial packages available free of charge.

Authors are encouraged to prepare as much documentation as possible, including examples of how the provided software might be used, screencast showing the software in action, download statistics, or other public usage information, etc. Entries will be peer-reviewed. Selected authors will be invited to demonstrate their software as part of the conference program and their overview papers will be included in the ACM Multimedia 2012 Conference proceedings.

An overall winning entry will be formally recognized at ACM Multimedia 2012. The criteria for judging all submissions include broad applicability and potential impact, novelty, technical depth, demo suitability, and other miscellaneous factors (e.g., maturity, popularity, student-led, no dependence on closed source, etc.). To encourage more diverse participation, previous years’ non-winning entries are welcome to re-submit for the 2012 competition. Student-led efforts are particularly encouraged. The particular application area targeted by the open source software will not be a criterion for the winning entry.

Important Dates

  • Submission deadline:                             May 14, 2012 May 31, 2012  11:59pm PST (UTC-8)
  • Notification of acceptance:                    June 22, 2012 July 6, 2012
  • Camera-ready submission deadline:   July 30, 2012

Open Source Software Competition Guidelines
Authors interested in submitting an entry to the ACM Multimedia Open Source Software competition should make their software contribution available by providing a public URL for download and prepare a package containing the following information to be submitted via the online submission system under the Open Source Software Competition track:

  • Title of submission
  • Names and affiliations of authors (indicate students).
    In case of a large distributed project, include full list of contributors, if possible, and indicate main contact (e.g., project owner or maintainer)
  • A 4-page max paper including an overview of the open-source software package, its description, applications, intended audience, main features, etc.
  • Submitters are also encouraged to tag their paper with up to two areas from the main track (see Areas for a list of the areas).
  • A link to a compressed zip file that contains the software.
  • The license of the open source software.
  • The permanent link for the open source software (e.g., Sourceforge, Google Code, SVN)

The overview paper should be prepared using the same guidelines as for Short Papers.  Authors will be required to sign copyright to the ACM. The sentence “SUBMITTED to ACM MULTIMEDIA 2012 OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE COMPETITION” written in capital letters must appear in the first page, after the authors’ names.

The compressed zip archive file with all source code, documentation, build/install instructions, and licenses must be placed in a web accessible location. The public URL for project page where software, documentation, and open-source license can be found must be included in the overview paper.  Comprehensive and clear build/install instructions will be a crucial component of any submission. The evaluation committee will make reasonable effort to build the software for the top contributions, but if they are unable to make the software run, it will be excluded from the competition.

Link to the Online Submission System

Contacts

For any questions regarding the Open Source Software Competition please email the Program Chairs:

  • Daniel Gatica Perez (Idiap Research Institute and EPFL, CH): gatica-AT-idiap.ch
  • Masanori Sano (Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), JP): sano.m-fo-AT-nhk.or.jp