General guidelines for students that want to apply with us.
Get in touch & introduce yourself
These ideas were contributed by ninux developers and constributors. If you wish to submit a proposal based on these ideas, you may wish to contact the developers on the mailing list or on our jabber chat ninux.org@chat.jabber.ninux.org and find out more about the particular suggestion you're looking at.
Being accepted as a Google Summer of Code student is quite competitive. Accepted students typically have thoroughly researched the technologies of their proposed project and have been in frequent contact with potential mentors. Simply copying and pasting an idea here will not work. On the other hand, creating a completely new idea without first consulting potential mentors is unlikely to work out.
When writing your proposal or asking for help from the ninux community don't assume people are familiar with the ideas here. The Ninux people are all volounteers and keep up with the activity of the community at their own pace.
Introducing yourself to the general ninux-development mailing list is a very good idea!
Coming often on our jabber chat ninux.org@chat.jabber.ninux.org is another very good idea.
Read the GSoC student manual
Participating in the GSoC is not a joke! It requires effort and motivation.
To be aware of what you are doing, please read the amazing GSoC Student Guide.
Student application template
- What is your full name?
- Where are you from?
- Where do you live?
- What are you studying?
- Which programming languages are you most comfortable with?
- Have you ever contributed to any FLOSS project?
- Do you have any other work experience that you can show? Github repositories, websites, ecc.
- In what project idea are you interested?
- Give a general description of how you are going to meet the expected results: describe milestones with dates and describe what you intend to achieve in each milestone
- Why are you the right person for this task?
- How many hours are you going to work on this a week? 10? 20? 30? 40?
- Will you have exams during the summer? If yes, when?
- Do you intend to do other paid work during the summer? If yes, in which period?
- Are you comfortable working independently under a supervisor or mentor who might not be readily available via chat or phone 24 hours a day? Are you willing to put enough effort in acquiring the required skills you need to accomplish the project?
- To what extent are you familiar with the software you're proposing to work with? Have you used it? Have you read the source? Have you modified the source?
Are you willing to use the additional travel funding offered by Google to attend events like the Battlemesh or the Chaos Communication Camp?
- Do you have a public twitter or github profile?
- Leave us your phone number and email address
Hints
Submit your proposal early: early submissions get more attention from developers for the simple fact that they have more time to dedicate to reading them. The more people see it, the more it'll get known.
Do not leave it all to the last minute: while it is Google that is operating the webserver, it would be wise to expect a last-minute overload on the server. So, make sure you send your application before the final rush. Also, note that the applications submitted very late will get the least attention from mentors, so you may get a low vote because of that.
Know what you are talking about: the last thing we need is for students to submit ideas that cannot be accomplished realistically or ideas that aren't even remotely related to Ninux. If your idea is unusual, be sure to explain why you have chosen Ninux to be your mentoring organisation.
Aim wide: you can and should submit more than one proposal
The PostgreSQL project has also released a list of hints that you can take a look.