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GSoC 2009/Proposal

Latest revision as of 10:11, 12 February 2010

[edit] Describe your organization.

The Maemo community is a open source community developing software around the Maemo platform. The Maemo community has over 16,000 registered members who contribute to more than 800 development projects. We work with open source tools and processes. We develop new software on top of the platform as well as for the core platform itself. Applications developed with the Maemo SDK are used today by thousands of Maemo users around the world. The Maemo community is a well-organized group of people, including a Community Council (elected by community members every six months). The Maemo Community Council exists to represent the interests of the greater Maemo community other affiliated bodies.

[edit] Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2009? What do you hope to gain by participating?

The Maemo community is applying to participate in GSoC, because we think that GSoC can help our organization in several ways. We also have former GSoC students and mentors who are very enthusiastic about the program.

Aside from the benefits of participating in a program like GSoC, we have already improved by the action of applying: a lot of brainstorming has been accomplished and new ideas have arisen.. Still, we have many goals to achieve through our participation in GSoC. These are:

• Attract new people to the open source world.
• Bring new, talented developers to our community.
• Get help in some of our community projects.
• Meet new people and have fun during the summer.

Effectively, the Maemo community is applying as a "umbrella" organization: we will host projects that will most likely benefit many other embedded platforms & environments that have nothing to do with Maemo itself.

[edit] Did your organization participate in past GSoCs? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation.

Yes, in 2007.

This year, we have spoke with our GSoC 2007 mentors in order to acquire a big picture of our previous participation and found that there were some positive and negative aspects involved with the experience. In 2007, we had two successful projects that greatly helped our organization. But, during the course of the program, we had student attrition. In our opinion, this is something that our community must attempt to alleviate. This is true for the success of our role within GSoC and will also help to attract strong participants in the future.

One of our improvements for 2009 was to form a jointed group of former GsoC students and mentors, as well as some some newcomers. We strongly believe that this group will be able to keep our students motivated and excited about the projects that are taken on. Our main goal is to aid in developing a great summer of code.

[edit] If your organization has not previously participated in GSoC, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?

N/A

[edit] What license(s) does your project use?

The majority of our projects are licensed under:

• GPL v2 or later
• LGPL v2 or later
• MIT license

[edit] What is the URL for your ideas page?

http://wiki.maemo.org/GSoC_2009

[edit] What is the main development mailing list or forum for your organization?

The main Maemo development mailing list address is: maemo-developers@maemo.org

All Maemo community mailing lists can be found at: http://maemo.org/community/mailing-lists/

The main forum for discussing Maemo community-related topics is Internet Tablet Talk: http://www.internettablettalk.com/

[edit] What is the main IRC channel for your organization?

The main IRC channel for the Maemo community is #maemo @ freenode.

[edit] Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now.

Yes.

Student Template:

• Project title
• Project Abstract (short description, can be the same used above)
• Project full description
• Project tasks and deliverables
• Project schedule
• Do you have other commitments during the summer of code coding period ? If yes, what kind of commitments ?
• Why are you the right person for this project ?
• What are the benefits of your project for the Maemo Community ?
• Short Biography (academic work, open source background and other activities that you like to do)

[edit] Who will be your backup organization administrator? Please include Google Account information.

• Luis Felipe Moraes

[edit] Who will your mentors be? Please include Google Account information.

Mentors:

• Aniello Del Sorbo
• Csaba Kertész
• Eduardo Lima
• Florian Boor
• Gustavo Lima Chaves
• Ilias Biris
• Leandro Sales
• Luis Felipe Moraes (organization backup administrator)
• Luis Gustavo Lira
• Mike Jipping
• Mohammad Anwari
• Rafael Antognolli
• Thomas Perl
• Valério Valério (organization administrator)
• Zeeshan Ali

Backup Mentors:

• Andrew Flegg
• Quim Gil
• Ryan Abel
• Simon Pickering
• Tim Samoff

[edit] What criteria did you use to select these individuals as mentors? Please be as specific as possible.

We begin by inviting people who had some GSoC experience. The majority of our mentors are formerly GSoC students and mentors. We think that previous GSoC experience is an important factor in the success of GSoC.

There are also some newcomers who show enthusiasm in GSoC. Due their proven track record within our organization, they can also become mentors.

Our backup mentors are Maemo community members who are very active and respected within the community. They also possess a proven track record in the open source world. A few of them even have some experience in GSoC.

All of our mentors are strongly motivated and will help our community reach our GSoC goals. We desire to provide a pleasant summer of code to the students that we host.

[edit] What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?

We hope to overcome this issue as much as possible during the students selection process. We will be careful in selecting students who have additional commitments during the GSoC coding period, We would like to avoid those situations where a student might be overloaded with work.

Additionally, we will require students to submit weekly reports to their mentors and assigned backup mentors. This will help to keep track of the students progress. We are also going to require bi-weekly submissions of status reports for all projects to the Maemo community mailing list. This way, we can monitor our students status at any time in order to avoid potential issues that may arise during the coding period.

Lastly, at the beginning of the GSoC coding period the students and their mentors will review and adapt their project schedules in order to assure that project scopes are realistic.

Besides the preventive measures described above, we will always try to keep our students motivated.

[edit] What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?

We are planning in such a way that every project has at least one "backup" mentor. This person will be involved in the project development. In the case of problems with the primary mentor, the backup mentor shall assist the student in order to accomplish the final goals of the project. The organization administration will also be in touch with the all of the mentors, so that we can prevent possible problems throughout the duration of the project.

[edit] What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?

We will encourage all of the students to get involved in our mailing lists and IRC channels. Before the coding period begins, we will encourage students to brainstorm all of their ideas for possible projects with the community. This way, the students will have a better grasp of the kinds of projects that the community would like to see developed. This preliminary discussion will be very important for our overall organization of the GSoC coding period.

During the coding period the students must send bi-weekly updates to the Maemo community mailing list. This way, they can share their thoughts, problems, and decisions with the community. The community will also be able to offer possible solutions for anything that comes up.

When GSoC ends, we don't want to have students anymore. We want to have motivated Maemo community members. We would like to keep our members involved with the GSoC projects as well as other Maemo community projects.

[edit] What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes?

The Maemo community is a very active and friendly community. During the GSoc coding period, our mentors will help to motivate the students. But our community will also be integral in helping to motivate, making suggestions, and overseeing the scope of each project. In effect, the students can feel a community reward: to be a part of the community. This community commitment will ensure more collaboration with our community aside from GSoC. We believe that the community reward and motivation is one of the key factors for any good and solid open source project.