Hints on how to engage with a free software community and start to contribute with the project.

1. GSoC: How to get prepared and write a good
proposal
(or how to start contributing with FLOSS)
Jo˜o Paulo Rechi Vita
a
jprvita@gmail.com
http://jprvita.wordpress.com/
July 22, 2010

2. What is Google Summer of Code?
Flip bits not burgers!

3. GSoC Overview
US$5k
Mentor
One month for community bounding
Three month for code development
Two evaluations

4. How to get in the game?
FLOSS / GSoC

5. How to get in the game?
Choose a project you like :)

6. How to get in the game?
Choose a project you like :)
(or at least one you use)

7. Choose a project you like
150 participating organizations (2010) 1
1
http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/program/accepted orgs/google/gsoc2010

8. Find the source, Neo

9. The source
VCS
Git o/, Subversion :( , Bazaar, Mercurial
Get the code, change between revisions, generate a diff

10. The source
VCS
Git o/, Subversion :( , Bazaar, Mercurial
Get the code, change between revisions, generate a diff
Compile
configure && make && make install
local installation (gnu stow, $HOME/local, /usr/local)
$PATH, $LD LIBRARY PATH, $PYTHONPATH
understand the configure process

11. The source
VCS
Git o/, Subversion :( , Bazaar, Mercurial
Get the code, change between revisions, generate a diff
Compile
configure && make && make install
local installation (gnu stow, $HOME/local, /usr/local)
$PATH, $LD LIBRARY PATH, $PYTHONPATH
understand the configure process
Run

12. Community Bounding

13. Community Bounding
People

14. Community Bounding
People
Documentation
Mailing lists
IRC

15. Community Bounding – Documentation
RTMF!

16. Community Bounding – Documentation
RTMF!
IF the F* Manual F* Exists !!

17. Community Bounding – Documentation
RTMF!
IF the F* Manual F* Exists !!
Use the source, Luke

18. Community Bounding – Mailing Lists
Archives are you friends :)
Use plain text
Don’t hijack threads
Write a useful subject line
Language

19. Community Bounding – Mailing Lists
Archives are you friends :)
Use plain text
Don’t hijack threads
Write a useful subject line
Language
Don’t top post!

20. Community Bounding – Mailing Lists
>Because it changes the natural order of phrases.
Why top posting is so bad?

21. Community Bounding – Mailing Lists
How to ask questions the smart way
http://www.catb.org/˜esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

22. Community Bounding – IRC
Nicks
/whois
Channel topic
Don’t ask to ask, just ask!
Answers come faster if you know who to ask

23. Get Involved

24. Get Involved – Getting Kudos
IRC – hang out and answer questions
ML – answer questions / review patches
Localization
Talk / Post about your project (patches, howto’s)

25. Get Involved – Finding tasks
Issue tracker / bugzilla
TODO / HACKING files
Mailing list
GSoC project ideas (ask potential mentors)

26. When to start?
NOW!

27. GSoC Proposal
Discuss the idea with the community
Organization template
Explain the implementation
Schedule
Why should you be the chosen one?

28. GSoC Proposal – Examples
A2DP Sink (BlueZ/2009)
http://jprvita.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/gsoc09-is-
up-and-running/
AVRCP Metadata (BlueZ/2010)
http://jprvita.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/avrcp-
metadata/

29. Questions?
Jo˜o Paulo Rechi Vita
a
jprvita@gmail.com
http://jprvita.wordpress.com/
Some ideas from this talk were based this LH’s talk:
http://www.slideshare.net/lhawthorn/getting-started-in-free-and-open-
source-software
This presentation is available at http://slideshare.net/jprvita under the
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License