GSoC 2017
Why does Haiku want to participate?
The Google Summer of Code is a wonderful opportunity for the Haiku Project. It exposes Haiku to many potential youthful and energetic minds that are interested in developing Open Source Software. Even more exciting, it provides a unique opportunity of generating income for the Project while growing a handful of carefully selected students into knowledgeable and potential long-term contributors. As an open source project that develops an operating system, our pool of active committers is relatively small and being able to embrace new contributors is literally a wonderful thing.
As a mentoring organization, we balance selecting impressive students (who display promise of becoming regular contributors) and useful projects (which can be mentored and are appropriate for Haiku).
We strive to nurture our students into talented and motivated open-source developers. This includes being able to communicate effectively on public mailing lists, provide relevant information in bug reports, continually publish code for peer-review, and perhaps most importantly, knowing when to ask for help. Those skills empower them with the confidence and ability to continue making valued contributions to Haiku (or any open source project for that matter).
Current status of the program
This year, Haiku, Inc submitted an application in a wider scope than in previous years. It includes project ideas from Haiku (the core operating system), but also from several related projects. This is the case for some "umbrella organizations" in GSoC for several years already, and allows smaller projects to get their share of students as well.
In the case of Haiku, the core system is getting mature, and there is now space for students working on various applications.
The Haiku developers have come up with a list of ideas for students to choose from or to base their proposals on.
The candidate students need to start discussing application ideas with Haiku
as soon as possible. This discussion phase is important for mentors to
decide which students will be accepted into the program.
There's a Student Application Mini-FAQ to guide students through the first steps.
Who are the Haiku mentors?
Haiku utilizes a mentor pool, as a complement to the assigned mentor (and co-mentor) for each student. The mentor pool allows additional people to provide support throughout the Google Summer of Code program. Students who utilize the mentor pool avoid bottlenecks that can happen, when responsibility would otherwise depend on a single person inside a volunteer driven project. This also helps to strengthen the students' ability and comfort with discussions on an open mailing list, which is essential in many remote software development models. A complete list of all Haiku mentors for Google Summer of Code 2017 is being compiled.
How you can help Haiku in Google Summer of Code
Even as a non-mentor, you can help by providing assistance to the students on the mailing list and on the Haiku IRC channel. Making the students feel comfortable with the community is important, as it can help them do a better job at reaching their Google Summer of Code goals, and could also be the key to students staying with the project even after their Google Summer of Code assignment is over.