Submission 2 (SEFM area - Survey paper)

[AntonioCerone]

Formal Methods Communities of Practice: A Survey of Personal Experience

Abstract In this paper, we discuss certain Communities of Practice (CoP) in the field of formal methods, used for software engineering, especially with respect to state-based notations. The multiple communities involved with formal methods are examined here as related CoPs. In this context, the CoPs involved are open communities encouraging participation by al those interested, both in research and application. The authors have both been involved with formal methods over several decades, for most of their careers, and it is hoped that their observations in this paper may help future community building to further the development of formal methods, and software engineering in general. A bibliography is included at the end of the paper.

[twasserman]

Pass on reviewing this one.

[AntonioCerone]

The first three reviewers for this paper are:

• Anthony Wasserman
• Alexander Petrenko
• Luis Barbosa

Two more reviewers will be added tomorrow.

The PDF of the paper is: OpenCERT_2021_paper_2.pdf

[fsciarrone]

I will review this paper Filippo Sciarrone

[AntonioCerone]

Sorry Anthony wrote 'pass'. My mistake in overlooking that. The first three reviewers for this paper are:

• Alexander Petrenko
• Luis Barbosa
• Filippo Sciarrone

[museophile]

I have logged in as the main author as requested by email and will check for comments every so often.

[AntonioCerone]

The final reviewer assignment for this paper is:

• Alexander Petrenko
• Luis Barbosa
• Filippo Sciarrone
• Nicola Capuano
• Ralf Klamma

The PDF of the paper is: OpenCERT_2021_paper_2.pdf

[opencert]

The following comment is posted on behalf of Luis Barbosa.

The paper recalls some bits of a long path in building communities around the development of state-based formal methods for, as the authors mention, "computer-based specification, modelling and development”. This is of course a most interesting component of formal methods, but indeed just a part of the big picture, an issue that I suggest to be suitably reflected in the title.

Actuallyr, even from the strict perspective of CoP, there are quite interesting examples in the area of verification, namely around collaborative tool development. An example worth to explore is the case of Hets (http://hets.eu/) in which new packages formalising new logics and their translations are added incrementally and assessed by the community made up of people that often never met in person. Looking at the logs will possibly provide quite interesting insights in the way the community evolved.

This said, I find interesting the effort made in sections 3 and 4 to illustrate some aspects of CoP development with concrete cases from the ABZ community. Maybe more could be added in terms of lessons learnt (e.g. why did the community evolved the way it did and in what sense the adopted practices made this process hard or smooth? how did the community deal with different cultural, linguistic and academic backgrounds over such a long period? What was the perception of this CoP by the academy/society at large? Was there a role for more traditional contexts, for example professional societies like IFIP or ACM in this process? etc)

To be honest, I was a bit puzzled with section 1 (and even more so with fig 1) which is basically a personal recollection. Maybe this stuff could be better articulated with a careful analysis of the CoP, avoiding the memorialist register.

Typo: pag 2: there as a period when —> there was a period when

[opencert]

Thank you Luis for your comments. While waiting for comments from the other reviewers, we remind all reviewers that this submission is a Survey paper, to collect previously published studies on topics related to the workshop and analyse them in the context of open communities.

[opencert]

We would like to clarify that the current interactive phase of the review process is for the reviewers to provide comments that help authors to improve their work. The issue on whether to accept or reject the submission should not be mentioned during this phase. It will be considered, discussed and finalised within a closed meeting during the assessment phase, which will be carried out on EasyChair.

[museophile]

Section 1 is some personal background, but I can remove it if other reviewers think it is not worthwhile. Hets looks interesting, but I have no personal knowledge of this, so it may be best for others to write on this. I could certainly add more on lessons learnt from my personal experience. I would be interested to hear from other reviewers as to which aspects of the first review they agree with or disagree with. If at least two reviewers agree on some aspect of updating, I will concentrate on those!

[klamma]

Usually, I do a small summary of the paper. I leave this out and start with the things I liked about the paper.

• The paper is well written and serves as a collection of personal memories about the development of a.professional community of practice, the Z community, a scientific community fostering the use of the Z notion in various application areas.
• In particular, section 3 connects to important components of the CoP theory by Wenger. Here domain, community and practice are addressed. Moreover, various stages a CoP can pass are linked to passages of the Z community.
• For me, the collection of paper is the result of a reification process like Wenger is describing it, building an own repository of the CoP.

The paper has also some weaknesses.

• The introduction is not introducing well the research gap. What are the open problems and what does the paper contribute to overcome these challenges?
• The paper collection would be an ideal data set to study the development of the CoP, e.g. by disclosing the co-authorship relationships. This would help to understand how becoming an expert and belonging to the community was facilitated by the various workshops, user meetings, conferences etc.
• The paper is not very clear about research methodology, the results and the impact of the research. This is reflected by ignoring the classic Motivation - Problem - Solution - Results - Impact schema in the abstract and in the introduction/conclusions part.
• Many aspects of CoP have not been addressed. Further developments like landscapes of practice have not been considered. But this may be asked to much from a theoretical point of view.

[museophile]

Many thanks for the helpful feedback. I will aim to improve the introduction. I can include more on co-authorship and some of the referenced papers include visualisation of this. I can explicitly reference these. Adding more detail could require a whole paper, but I can include an overview with reference to papers with more information. I can give an idea of how conferences, etc., can help. The research methodology here is essential personal reminiscence, but I can be a bit more explicit on this. I will try to include "Motivation - Problem - Solution - Results - Impact" in the abstract/introduction/conclusion as appropriate. I can certainly add something on "landscapes of practice", thank you for the idea, but at this stage, it will have to be in outline - perhaps as future work, to be developed!

[museophile]

I will respond to the comments above in the paper as best I can in the time available.

[museophile]

opencert2021.pdf This is an updated version of the paper following the reviewers' comments. My co-author is checking it. If there are any further revisions I will upload another version before 12 noon GMT on Sunday 14 November 2021.

[museophile]

I confirm that the version of the paper (in PDF format) in the previous message is the final updated version. Please confirm receipt. Is the LaTeX source required too? Please advise ASAP if so.

[marte-git]

Hi! The latest version of this paper is now available also in easychair.

[marte-git]

Thank You everybody, for participating in a very interesting review protocol and experience.

Please place your review on Easychair, so Antonio and I will be able to proceed towards notification. Thanks again, and cheers :) Antonio & Marco

[museophile]

Dear Antonio & Marco,

Thank you, let me know if and when any action is required by me.

Best regards,

Jonathan Bowen

Prof. Jonathan Bowen https://sites.google.com/site/jpbowen/ FBCS FRSA Emeritus Professor of Computing, London South Bank University, UK Adjunct Professor, Southwest University, Chongqing, China Chairman, Museophile Limited, Oxford, UK See The Turing Guide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turing_Guide, OUP (2017) & Museums and Digital Culture https://www.springer.com/book/9783319974569, Springer (2019)

On Fri, 19 Nov 2021 at 10:03, marte-git @.***> wrote:

Thank You everybody, for participating in a very interesting review protocol and experience.

Please place your review on Easychair, so Antonio and I will be able to proceed towards notification. Thanks again, and cheers :) Antonio & Marco

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[fsciarrone]

Hi, sorry but I do not find the opencert workshop in the easychair platform. I think I'm not in the PC of the workshop, so please add me. best f