Google Summer of Code 2010 Participation
What is OpenInkpot?
OpenInkpot is open project developing free/libre software for eBook devices with ePaper-like screens.
Why do we apply for GSoC 2010?
We hope to bring more people into the community, especially from other regions of Earth, as our team is mostly European today.
Diverse development community will bring better support for various languages (and it is big advantage for book readers, as typography and scripts support is really important), and also support for new eBook devices.
Did we participate in GSoC before?
Yes. We've got 3 slots in GSoC 2008, all projects succeeded, and one of students is now a member of OpenInkpot core development team.
The biggest challenge in 2008 was language barrier, so we will check the students' basic knowledge of English in future.
License
GPLv2 or later for code, CC-BY-SA 3.0 for the wiki and artwork.
Ideas Page
http://openinkpot.org/wiki/GSoC/Ideas
Contacts
- development mailing list
- IRC channel: #openinkpot % irc.oftc.net
Application Template
http://openinkpot.org/wiki/GSoC/Template/Application
Organization administrators
- Mikhail Gusarov <dottedmag@…>
- Igor Stroh <jenner@…>
Mentors selection critera
Prospective mentors are to have considerably long contribution history in OpenInkpot (maintenance of packages, implementation of big feature or new application, new device port), and also able to communicate well with students (there are contributors who don't speak English well).
Disappearing students
We are going to adopt the scheme that worked well for us in GSoC 2008:
- Weekly IRC meetings
- If student is absent on a meeting, then he/she is pinged by mail
- If student does not answer mail, mentor call him/her by phone and notifies GSoC administrators
- If anything else fails, student is marked as failed
Disappearing mentors
If one of mentors disappear, organization admin (or backup organization admin if main admin is the disappeared mentor) will step in.
Community interaction
We encourage students to discuss their proposals in IRC and project mailing list before applying.
The main communication channels for interaction with students are project IRC and mailing list, and we suggest students to lurk on IRC channel all the time. Additionally we do not require students to use separate infrastructure for they code, but ask them to use project's wiki, git hosting and ticketing system to work on their tasks.
After GSoC
Students will have interesting device to hack on after finishing their program (if they did not have it yet before being involved in GSoC), and will have an incentive to improve it if they read lot of books. Additionally we also will communicate upfront the possibility of contract work for the successful project participants, as there is small business community around OpenInkpot sponsoring development of new features and porting it to new devices.
