1. Summer of Code 2007
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GNOME will be participating in Google's Summer of Code (SoC) again this year. We will have a bunch of students working on some cool projects related to the GNOME desktop. Each project is supervised by an experienced member of the GNOME community.
We need help to make GNOME SoC this year a success again. If you develop software for the GNOME desktop, please consider to become a mentor this summer. If you are a student, please consider applying for GNOME Summer of Code to become a student participant.
Please check this page out again when call for proposals is out. Feel free to join the #soc channel on irc.gnome.org! If you have any questions, please read Google SoC's frequently asked questions first. If you still have questions, don't hesitate to contact BehdadEsfahbod and VincentUntz, however, please avoid questions like "do you think my idea will be accepted?".
1.1. Accepted Proposals
You can see the list of accepted proposals for this year at /AcceptedProposals.
1.2. Important Dates
March 14: List of accepted mentoring organizations published on code.google.com; student application period opens
March 26: Student application deadline
- April 11: List of accepted student applications published on code.google.com
May 28: Students begin coding for their GSoC projects; Google begins issuing initial student payments
The complete list of important dates can be found in SoC timeline.
1.3. Pool of Project Ideas
You can look at our pool of project ideas: /Ideas. All potential mentors, don't hesitate to add some ideas of projects that could improve GNOME.
It's important to note that this list is not exclusive: if you are a student and have an idea that is not listed in our pool of project ideas, don't hesitate to apply for your project. It's probably a good idea to ask people in the GNOME community if they think your idea is good, though.
1.4. Information for Students
SoC is a program promoting open source software development by sponsoring students to work on open source projects from the comfort of their home. If you are a student interested in developing open source software, this program is for you! Don't worry if you have not developed open source software before. We are generally looking for students who are willing to learn, have good coding skills and, most importantly, have a keen interest in open source software development.
A list of university representatives is found in /UniversityAdvertisement. Watch out for SoC advertisements at your school!
Students who successfully complete SoC will receive USD$4500 for their work.
1.4.1. How to Apply
To participate in SoC as a student, you must be an individual enrolled in an accredited post-secondary institution. Sorry, we don't accept group applications. Please check Google's Summer of Code eligibility page for more details. You must also provide a project proposal in your SoC application. Please see /Ideas for potential projects.
It is not too early to start working on your SoC application! Note that SoC's positions are extremely competitive. Last year, GNOME SoC received 181 applications and only 20 of them were accepted. Make sure you research the potential projects and write up a strong application. Your SoC application should be specific to your project. Potential Summer of Code applicants may also want to read Google's advice for SoC students page. Please see "Selection Process" section below for GNOME-specific details.
Once you're ready to apply, follow these instructions.
1.4.2. How you will work
If your application is accepted, here are some information about how you'll integrate with our community, and what we'd like you to do:
- You will have access to a svn repository where you'll put your code
You will be subscribed to the gnome-soc-list mailing list
If you have a blog, we'll aggregate it on a Planet about GNOME and Summer of Code: we're all interested not only in your projects, but also in knowing you! You can have a look in Planet GNOME at http://planet.gnome.org.
- You can come in the #soc channel on irc.gnome.org, to talk with other students and mentors (and feel free to join other channels!)
- We'd like you to send a weekly summary about your progress. If there hasn't been a lot of code written, it's not a big issue, since writing about your thoughts is still interesting
- It'd be great if you could try as much as possible to integrate with the community in all possible ways! That's the most important part of Summer of Code.
1.5. Information for Mentors
Every GNOME Foundation members can apply to be a mentor. They will then be able to look at all project applications, comment on them and note that they could mentor specific projects. If you're not a GNOME Foundation member and you don't want to become a member, you can still apply to be a mentor.
To register as a GNOME SoC mentor, you will need to get a Google account and visit this page:
Follow the instructions in the "Registering to Participate in the Program" section. And please make sure you remember to put a check in the box for GNOME!
(NOTE: Due to issues on Google's end, we can't currently accept your mentor registration. We expect this to be fixed "soonish". Please register ASAP anyway!)
Other mentoring resources:
1.6. Selection Process
Since an important goal of the Summer of Code for us is to get new contributors, we'll try to avoid accepting students who already participated in a GNOME-related SoC/WSOP project or who is already a GNOME contributor (thus, this does not apply to students who participated in SoC, but in a totally unrelated to GNOME project). However, this is not a strict rule: if a student in such a case proposes a really great project, we'll accept his/her application without any hesitation. Also, we don't require prior open source involvement.
Every GNOME Foundation member who will have asked it will be able to look at the student applications and comment on them. When the student application period is closed, a small selection committee (around 10 people) will analyze the comments and select the projects that are, in their opinion, the best. Here's a non-complete list of criteria: usefulness for GNOME, if the student has already good thoughts about the project, chances that the project is completed, etc.
The selection committee will be announced in a few days. If you're interested in being in this committee, please contact BehdadEsfahbod and VincentUntz.
1.7. Links
- Minutes of GNOME meetings about Summer of Code 2007:
- GNOME's Google Summer of Code