Google Summer of Code
Contents
What is it?
Geeklog did not participate in GSoC in 2011 and 2012. We applied for participation again in 2013 but were not selected. Fortunately, The Fedora Project offered us one slot under their umbrella, allowing us to participate in GSoC 2013 under the Fedora umbrella. Thanks, Fedora!
Project Ideas
Below is a list of project ideas that we have picked for our cooperation with Fedora in GSoC 2013 and that we feel would add useful functionality to Geeklog. Please note that only one of these projects will be selected!
Note: Since we have only one student slot for Geeklog under the Fedora umbrella, we would prefer if you'd pick one of the above three ideas for your proposal. If you decide to apply with another idea, you need to make a really strong case ...
Other Ideas
The following or other GSoC ideas that we have to put on the back burner for now. We may pick those up again in a future GSoC (should Google decide to run the program again):
- Add Support for Dynamic Feeds with Access Control
- Core Notification Service
- Unit Test Framework revisited
- Improve Geeklog's spam filter
- Template Engine Upgrade
- Merge display of comments with trackbacks and pingbacks
- Topic Improvements
- Also see GSoC Brainstorming for more ideas. These aren't fully fleshed-out but can serve as a starting point for your own project proposal.
Mentors
The Geeklog project under the Fedora umbrella will be mentored by Dirk Haun.
Notes for Students
We have collected some information for students here. Please take a moment to read them. Thank you.
Recommended reading
Google provides an extensive FAQ about the program. There's also a very informative Advice for Students page as well as a much longer GSoC Student Guide. We recommend reading those first.
If you're new to open source development in general, the free ebook Open Advice provides insights and experiences from contributors to various open source projects. There's also the classic Producing Open Source Software, which goes into a lot more detail (you may want to start with Open Advice for a quick(er) overview).
Required skills
Students interested in any of the above projects should have reasonable experience with PHP and some basic SQL knowledge. Being able to set up your own LAMP server (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) would probably help but isn't a prerequisite. Depending on the project you apply for, there may be other required skills, e.g. JavaScript or HTML.
Geeklog uses Mercurial for revision control. Students should have a basic grasp of revision control; we can help you with the specifics of Using Mercurial.
If you meet theses requirements, you may want to try and "get your feet wet". See our Getting Started guide.
Also see what we expect from our students during the course of the Summer.
Background information
Geeklog (current version: 2.0.0) is the software you may have seen running websites such as Groklaw.
Contact
- Important: Please note that while we encourage you to send a draft proposal to one of the addresses below first, in the end you must submit your proposal through the official Summer of Code website. Only applications submitted through the website can be considered! Google provides detailed instructions - please follow them.
We suggest that you join our Development Mailing List and introduce yourself and the project(s) you are interested in. This list is the best place for any questions or discussions related to the projects and their development.
Or you can hop on our IRC channel, #geeklog at irc.freenode.net and talk to us directly (some patience required - not everyone may be online there all the time).
If you need a more private communication channel, you can also email us at
- contact-us(AT)lists.geeklog.net
or use this web form. This goes to a private mailing list which is read only by Geeklog's GSoC mentors.
Application Template
When applying for a project with Geeklog, please include information covering the following points in your application.
- Please tell us something about yourself (experience, interests, why you are applying for this project).
- Please include contact information (an email address, at the very least), as we won't have access to the contact information that you entered when you registered for GSoC.
- Please explain, in your own words, what the project is and what its goals are.
- Please provide a schedule for your project: The order in which you plan to implement features and an estimate how long it will take and when they will be finished. Don't forget to factor in some time for tests and documentation into your plans.
- If there are any periods during the Summer when you will not be able to work on your project (e.g. due to exams or planned vacations), then please also include this information.
- We would like to ask GSoC applicants to submit a patch for Geeklog as part of your application. You can find our project tracker here: http://project.geeklog.net/tracking/. Try looking for issues that are tagged "beginner" but feel free to tackle any other issue. This will give us an opportunity to see your coding skills in practice.
Feel free to expand on this list - just make sure to touch on all the information requested above.
Thank you!
Further Reading
- Getting Started with Geeklog development
- The Summer of Code topic on geeklog.net provides coverage of our previous participation in the Google Summer of Code.
