Summer of Code 2008

GNOME will be participating in Google's Summer of Code (SoC) again this year. We will have a bunch of students working on some cool projects related to the GNOME desktop. Each project is supervised by an experienced member of the GNOME community.

We need help to make GNOME SoC this year a success again. If you develop software for the GNOME desktop, please consider to become a mentor this summer. If you are a student, please consider applying for GNOME Summer of Code to become a student participant.

Please check this page out again when call for proposals is out. Feel free to join the #soc channel on irc.gnome.org! If you have any questions, please read Google SoC's frequently asked questions first. If you still have questions, don't hesitate to contact BehdadEsfahbod, LucasRocha, VincentUntz and ChristianKellner, however, please avoid questions like "do you think my idea will be accepted?".

Important Dates

March 12: Mentoring organisation application deadline.
March 17: List of accepted mentoring organizations published on code.google.com; student application period opens
March 24: Student applications open
April 07: Student application deadline
April 21: List of accepted student applications published on code.google.com
May 26: Students begin coding for their GSoC projects; Google begins issuing initial student payments
August 18: Pencils down

The complete list of important dates can be found in SoC timeline.

Project Ideas

Our pool of project ideas is found in /Ideas. All potential mentors, don't hesitate to add some ideas of projects that could improve GNOME. All potential student applicants are encouraged to browse this page.

Information for Students

/Students

Information for Mentors

All GNOME Foundation members can apply to be a mentor. They will then be able to look at all project applications, comment on them and note that they could mentor specific projects. If you're not a GNOME Foundation member and you still want to become a member, you can apply, too.

Mentor registration is not yet open on Google's Summer of Code site.

Other mentoring resources:

Selection Process

Since an important goal of the Summer of Code for us is to get new contributors, we'll try to avoid accepting students who already participated in a GNOME-related SoC/WSOP project or who is already a GNOME contributor (thus, this does not apply to students who participated in SoC, but in a totally unrelated to GNOME project). However, this is not a strict rule: if a student in such a case proposes a really great project, we'll accept his/her application without any hesitation. Also, we don't require prior open source involvement.

Every GNOME Foundation member will be able to look at the student applications and comment on them. When the student application period is closed, a small selection committee (around 10 people) will analyze the comments and select the projects that are, in their opinion, the best. Here are some criteria of selection: usefulness for GNOME, if the student has already good thoughts about the project, chances that the project is completed, etc.