This page contains all sorts of information on JGrader - who we are, what the program does, and other things. It also includes the history of the project and some discussion of what it means to be open source.
JGrader was started in January of 2004 by Edward Rice, who is still the manager and main developer of the project. It is a relatively new open source project, and it has a ways to go before it will actually become a program, but that day will indeed come. There are currently four developers besides Edward. Three of these developers are web designers, the rest are Java programmers.
JGrader aims to be a useful, easy, and advanced aid to teachers. Much of the grading software today does not come out with new releases often, and does not improve the software as time goes by, but JGrader plans to be better. We are committed to you, the user. We will listen to your comments and suggestions.
JGrader is non-profit and open source. These are two different but related things that must be understood correctly. Non-profit means that the project was not started to earn money, and not a cent will be earned by its founder, Mr. Rice. This does not mean that there is no money involved, because there are still project expenses such as paying for the web site and development software. There is also the issue that we feel that sourceforge.net, the host of our software development, should receive money so that it can host other projects like ours. We voluntarily give a large percentage of our donations to sourceforge.net. All of this money comes from voluntary donations from users like you. We rely on donations such as these to survive, so your generosity is greatly appreciated.
Open source means that the software can be freely distributed. If you have a copy of the software, you can copy it and give it to whoever you want. Also, anyone can see the source code of the software (the code written by programmers used to make the program). This means that an amatuer programmer could look at JGrader to see how to do something. If he thought that he could improve the software, he could do this and either tell us what he did so we can do the same or he could make his own version of it and do what he wanted with it. Also, anyone can help us develop it anywhere in the world. This is an amazing thing.
Open source is a wonderful thing. It allows people all over the world to come together in a virtual environment and combine their skills to make the program better. But, as many things, it relies on the generosity of people. It relies on the generosity of programmers like ones on this team. It relies on the generosity of users like you.
As the home page of this project states, we do not have a release out. You can see how the program is coming by reading the news page. Allowing time, we will have a wonderful product out that will be of use to teachers all over the world.