openSUSE to be part of GSOC 2012!

Good news! As followers of our openSUSE Google+ account already know, openSUSE will be part of GSOC 2012. That means it is now time for the students to take the openSUSE GSOC ideas, find a mentor and start creating proposals to be submitted to Google. We’ve got until April 6th for this, at which point openSUSE and Google will start to look at the proposals.

Proposals

So what does a good proposal look like? There is plenty of advice to be found:

• How to write a kick-ass proposal for GSOC

• Do’s and Dont’s of GSOC

• The GSOC Student Guide

• Examples of proposals

As is being said above, the proposal has to be technically sound and realistic. For this, make sure you write it in cooperation with the potential mentor(s). They know what can and can’t be done and what makes sense! In the end, you have to convince both GOOGLE and the openSUSE GSOC team and they heavily rely on the mentors’ opinions. Work with them!

For openSUSE GSOC proposals We’d like you to include at least the following items:

• Background

• Use Cases

• Benefits

• Caveats

• Technical Details

• Why Me

• Contact Information

Now go to our GSOC 2012 page and write a kick-ass proposal!

What Next?

Once the proposals are selected and Google has given us a share, May 21st coding will start and it will continue (with a mid term evaluation on July 13th) until August 13.

But now, first order of the day is for students to talk to their mentors and flesh (not flush) out those ideas!

You can find all information about our GSOC program on our wiki and you can always ask the openSUSE GSOC team if you have any questions:

• Vincent “vuntz” Untz

• Matt Barringer

They hang out on IRC in our #opensuse-project channel on Freenode!