Archive for 2012 emails

1. GSoC is ON!

Subject: GSoC is ON!
To: desktop-devel-list, soc-mentors-list
CC: soc-admins

Hi all,

GNOME was accepted for GSoC! \\o//

Thanks to so many of you who've already listed project ideas [1]. It's not too late to add more ideas - please refer to two previous e-mails on the subject [2] [3]. Whether you are planning to mentor or not, it would be helpful to have more people hanging out in #gnome-love and #soc who can guide students and help them get up to speed with GNOME development. The application deadline for students is May 3.

If you are a mentor for an idea on the ideas page or are working with a student who is applying for GSoC, please subscribe to soc-mentors-list@gnome.org [4] now to receive future communications. Also, please apply to be a mentor with GNOME in Google's system [5]. This will allow you to comment on applications once they start coming in. Even if you don't end up mentoring this summer, you will still receive a t-shirt!! (And let's admit it, this is what everyone here is after.)

In the next 3 1/2 weeks, please do your best to get to know the students applying to work with you as a mentor and help them become contributors to your project. A contribution to the module the student is applying to work on is required for an application to be considered.

Also, please be sure to redirect students to other ideas or mentors if you already have a strong student applying to work on the idea or already have as many strong students applying to work on the ideas you plan to mentor as you can handle. It's better to let students know to look elsewhere, than have them submit duplicate ideas.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions.

Cheers,
Zeeshan Ali, Alexandre Franke, Christophe Fergeau, Fabiano Fidencio, Daniel Siegel, Marina Zhurakhinskaya
Your friendly GNOME GSoC Admins
soc-admins@gnome.org

[1] https://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2013/Ideas
[2] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2013-March/msg00052.html
[3] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2013-March/msg00136.html
[4] https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/soc-mentors-list
[5] http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2013

2. Welcome to summer of code

Placed in "Message to accepted students" on the organization page in Melange.

Dear GNOME-loving student,

Congratulations: you did it! The GNOME community is glad to welcome
you, and to have you participate in the Google Summer of Code and work
on GNOME!

Some of you already know the GNOME community quite well, but it might
not be the case for every one of you. That's not a problem: GSoC has a
community bonding time, where you will have a few weeks to get to know
the community before starting the real work. That's a really good
thing, and we hope you'll be able to see how great, friendly and
helpful the GNOME community is!

The first thing we want you to do is to contact your mentor. Write her
or him a nice mail or buy her/him a beer (or some juice) if you happen
to live in the same city :-).

If during the GSoC, you have a problem with your mentor (lack of
communication, or misunderstandings, or deep disagreements, or
anything else), don't hesitate to report that to the GNOME
administrators (listed on https://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2013 ):
they'll be there to help with this kind of things and their goal is
to make sure that you feel good, so they will work hard to fix any
issue with your mentor. But hopefully, this won't be needed: all
mentors and administrators are nice people (or at least, they're
supposed to be ;-)).

We will subscribe you to our mailing list for the Summer of Code:

 http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-soc-list

This is the list where mails will be sent when we need to reach all of
you. Feel free to use this list for discussion between all mentored
students, or to ask questions about GNOME, or about the community or
about anything you need.

To begin things, it would be great if you send to this list an
introduction mail so that the whole community knows about you, your
project, your plans, etc.

You can then use your introduction mail to fill the wiki page for your
GSoC project. First, add a link to it from a page that lists all
projects, then create a wiki page for your individual project.

 https://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2013/Projects

This is a good place to introduce your project, link to the blog posts
you'll write, link to your code, etc. See the wiki pages from
last year if you need some examples:

 https://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2012/Projects

Feel free to edit other pages of the GNOME wiki too. This is where we
post the information relevant to the GNOME projects. From time to time,
you might like to look through the recent changes page to see what's
going on in GNOME.

 https://live.gnome.org/RecentChanges

Planet GNOME is an aggregator of blogs of GNOME contributors. From now
on, it will serve as your morning newspaper :-). We ask that you add
your blog to Planet GNOME, creating a new blog if necessary, and write
updates about your work during the internship period every two weeks.
Of course, you are welcome to blog more often too! It is exciting that
you will have a voice on Planet GNOME right from the start and it is a
very important way to let the GNOME community know about the work you
are doing! This will also allow us to keep track of your progress.
Once your blog is added, please write an introductory post and start
blogging about your work on GNOME and other things that you see
relevant for Planet GNOME.

 http://planet.gnome.org

Here is what you need to do to get yourself added to Planet GNOME.
You need to have a link to your blog or to a category of posts in your
blog AND a hackergotchi ready for that. This page has all the details:

 http://live.gnome.org/PlanetGnome

In particular, see "Do I have to only blog about GNOME things?"
section which explains that it's great to have posts about other
things that interest you aggregated on Planet GNOME, as long as they
can be of interest to other people in the community. So you should
decide whether you want to add your full blog or just a category
based on how frequently you blog and the range of topics you blog
about.

For the hackergotchi, you can either
1) Design it yourself by following the instructions here:

 http://live.gnome.org/HackergotchiGuidelines

2) Ask the art team to help you by creating a wiki page with a link
to your photo or your photo as an attachment and adding the request
to the bottom of the requests list here:

 http://live.gnome.org/GnomeArt/ArtRequests

3) You can see how your picture will look as a hackergotchi by
adding a layer mask in GIMP and clearing out everything around your
head. You can then save it as .xcf file and file an art request for
people on the art team to add the shadow. Here is an example of an
art request like that:

 http://live.gnome.org/GnomeArt/ArtRequests/issue45

The guide to adding a mask in GIMP is here:
 
 http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-dialogs-structure.html#gimp-layer-mask

Once you have the hackergotchi and the blog feed ready, file a bug
with them. Include your IRC nick as well. Be sure to use the right
Bugzilla product ('website') and component ('planet.gnome.org') for
your bug.

 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=website&component=planet.gnome.org

Mention that you are a GSoC student in the bug. That will get your
blog added fast even if it is completely new and will waive the
requirement of being the GNOME Foundation member. You will get a
special GSoC logo next to your posts on Planet GNOME.

Other mailing lists that might be of interest to you are the
desktop-devel-list and the gnome-love list:

 https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
 http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-love

You can participate in the general discussion on the
desktop-devel-list, and ask questions if you have problems with
building GNOME, or if you're not sure how to do something on
gnome-love list. You should also subscribe to the mailing
list relevant to your project.

You should join #gnome-hackers, #gnome-love, and #soc IRC channels
on GIMPNet (irc.gnome.org), as well as the channels relevant to
your project and other channels that might be of interest to you.
It's fine to just lurk on IRC. IRC is where people talk in GNOME,
and it is a great way to learn and discuss things. See this page
for more information:

 http://live.gnome.org/GnomeIrcChannels

If you prefer to use an address different from your gmail (or
google account) address to communicate, please tell the
administrators.

If your school starts before September 23, and you have vacation
time between now and June 17, we would like to encourage you to
start on your projects early.

That's all for now. If you have any questions, feel free to send
a mail to the administrators or the mailing lists, or ask your
mentor.

Small summary:
 + make sure you're in contact with your mentor(s)
 + subscribe to the gnome-soc-list mailing list
 + subscribe to other relevant mailing lists
 + create the wiki page for your project
 + get your blog added to Planet GNOME
 + hang out on IRC
 + introduce yourself on gnome-soc-list and on Planet GNOME
 + start early if you will be busy with school towards the end

Welcome and Congratulations!

Cheers,
GNOME GSoC Administrators

3. Mail for rejected students

Placed in "Message to rejected students" on the organization page in Melange.

Dear student,

Unfortunately, your proposal has not been accepted as a Google Summer of
Code 2013 project for GNOME.

Thanks a lot for your proposal. We are very honored that you took the
time to submit a proposal to make GNOME better. 

The response to the program has been particularly strong this year,
with many more students than we could accept successfully completing
the required contribution and establishing a relationship with a project
they applied for. We looked at the strength of the student's coding sills,
history of involvement in GNOME and free software, and relevance of the
proposed project for GNOME, when making the selection decisions.

We would love to have you as part of GNOME and help you gain more
experience with the project. There's no need to be a GSoC student to make
great contributions and learn more!

The mentor you worked with during the application process would be
happy to continue informally guiding you in your contributions to the
project. Please reach out to them with any questions you have and
continue creating patches as your time allows. Feel free to stick to the
project plan in your proposal. Be sure to join the IRC channel and the
mailing list of the project you are interested in, and talk to other
people too. Every project appreciates and respects new contributors!

Check out the GNOME Love initiative at http://live.gnome.org/GnomeLove.
Its whole purpose is to help people get on their feet in the GNOME
community. There is a mailing list, an IRC channel, a list of mentors,
and a huge list of bugs [3] that would be good for newcomers to work on.
Feel free to find a different project or try contributing to a few.

If you have any questions or concerns about how to proceed now or
throughout the summer, please don't hesitate to contact GNOME GSoC
administrators listed on https://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2013 .

Again, thanks for showing an interest in working with the GNOME
community. We hope to see you around, and perhaps in a future GSoC!

Best wishes,
GNOME GSoC Administrators