Summer of Code

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NOTICE: This page is a draft in active flux...
Please contribute to these contents and discuss issues on the discussion page.

From the 2009 FAQ: "Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects."

Sugar Labs Google SoC page: http://socghop.appspot.com/org/show/google/gsoc2009/sugarlabs

This is a project under Development Team. Mchua is the current project coordinator and can be contacted with any questions.

2009 results

We had a great year. All 5 of our students were successful, and several of them made really important improvements to Sugar. Here's the results:

Template:Version support for datastore/results

Karma

The Karma GSoC project has been a success. Participant Felipe Lopez Toledo set out to create a high-level library for creating interactive digital learning lessons using only openweb technologies. The result is the karma jQuery plugin that provides high-level functions for manipulating image, audio, and internationalization.

You can view the demo of Adding up to 10 to see an example interactive lesson.

The Karma Project is an initiative to create a platform that enables web developers to create compelling interactive learning materials for the Sugar Learning Environment without having to learn a new set of programming tools.

Previous Introduction

The purpose of this page (was) to coordinate a Sugar Labs Summer of Code effort.

What (made) a good project

Our focus is on collaboration and community for the summer 2009 round of projects, though we'll also consider thoughtful proposals that lie outside these two areas and can make a strong case for how they would support the Sugar Labs mission.

Collaboration

This refers to API or activity work that makes collaboration "work better." A good metric for "works better" is to ask the following: "6 months after the summer ends, which projects are likely to have caused the highest increase in children-hours spent collaborating over Sugar Activities?"

Community

This refers to meta-work that makes it easy for Sugar to reach a broader Sugar Labs; this includes development tools (and accompanying implementation of processes and training), internationalization/localization, accessibility, infrastructure-building, and porting Sugar to other platforms.

A good metric for "reaches a broader community" is to ask the following: "6 months after the summer ends, which projects are likely to cause the highest increase in SL community members that have participated consistently on a team for a minimum of 3 months?"

Get involved

Mentors

The preliminary Mentors' application page is now up.

Students

Student applications open on 23 March 2009. Look at the Resources page. It has links to many ideas and development resources. Your may also propose your own development ideas—show your creativity—combine the best aspects from the pool. Bring your proposals to the community, developers, and potential mentors (not limited to Mentors) for feedback on the mailing list or IRC.

Supporters

We're currently in the "get ideas" phase; please see Development Team/Project Ideas for a list of potential projects, and add your own. (There are some more project ideas from a brainstorming session at Sugar Camp that should be ported over; let Mchua know if you'd like to help with this.)

We would welcome help coordinating the overall effort as well; please contact Mchua if you'd like to get involved with this.

Community-building ideas

The mentoring org application includes the following questions:

What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?
What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes?

This is a place for brainstorming these issues.

[11:59] <mchua> homunq: we also need a general plan for how we're going to use this as a good community building tool for new developers, though that's a little vague [11:59] <mchua> homunq: stuff like "would a weekly check-in email be a good idea?" "do we require mentor meetings on IRC?" "are students mandated to blog about their work?"