Google Summer of Code

What is it?

The Google Summer of Code™ is a program sponsored by Google where they pay students to develop open source software. In its third incarnation in 2007, Geeklog took part in the program for the first time.

Note: Geeklog will be applying to take part in the Summer of Code 2008 again. At this point in time, however, no organizations have been selected yet. Please refer to Google's timeline for the program for details.

Project Ideas

This is a list of ideas for projects that we feel would add useful functionality to Geeklog. We are open for other ideas not listed here as long as they fit in with Geeklog's general ideas and concepts and can be done in the 3-months period of the Summer of Code program.

For Geeklog 1.x

• Improving the comments
• Webservices revisited
• Install script: Plugins and Migration
• SWOT (Spam: Web of Trust) (SWOT)
• Mailman Plugin
• Improved Search
• Add Social Networking Features
• Implement a theme based on the YUI CSS Foundation Libraries
• Cross Site Alerting and Publication API
• Implement Open Web Analytics
• Core Notification Service

There are also some leftover ideas from 2007.

For Geeklog 2

• Taxonomy and Tagging Plugin
• Continuous Builds
• Workflow Plugin
• Geeklog2 Syndication API
• Geeklog2 Anti-Spam "Solution"

Notes for Students

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.

Background information

Please note that there are two versions of Geeklog currently under active development but that they share little other than the name and a few contributors.

• Geeklog 1.x (currently 1.4.1, with 1.5.0 "almost done") is the software you may have seen running websites such as Groklaw.
• Geeklog 2 is "the next generation" of Geeklog and has been rewritten from the ground up. There are no released versions of Geeklog 2 yet.

Geeklog 1.x was started back in the year 2000 and its code is still mostly procedural and it uses its own (thin) database abstraction layer. Geeklog 2, on the other hand, is fully object oriented and uses technologies such as MVC and design patterns.

So basically, you can choose between working on a system that is in wide use already or one that uses all the latest and greatest in technology but isn't quite ready for mainstream use yet. In either case, you would be helping the Geeklog community immensely.

License

Geeklog 1.x has been released under the GPLv2 (GNU General Public License, version 2). All code written for Geeklog 1.x projects should also be released under that same license.

No final decision has been made on the license for Geeklog 2. However, it will most likely not be the GPL but a license in the spirit of the BSD license.

Contact

For all questions regarding Geeklog and the Summer of Code, please email us at contact-us(AT)lists.geeklog.net (or use this web form).