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GSoC Organization Application 2020

Douglas DeMaio edited this page Jan 18, 2021 · 1 revision

Organization Application

Why does your org want to participate in Google Summer of Code? (1000 char)

We started openSUSE with the principles of free software as primary driver to give all people the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software they use. As a Linux distribution, we integrate, maintain and provide access to thousands of Open Source software projects. A healthy and growing developer community is the key to our success. It is important for us to attract new people to participate in the openSUSE community who provide new perspectives and backgrounds; GSoC is an opportunity to do that. openSUSE is an ideal fit for GSoC because we offer projects in different areas of Open Source. Students are mentored by experienced hackers from one of the oldest and diverse Open Source communities, which has proven structures, methods, processes and infrastructure. We advertise GSoC and the ideas that are at the heart of it to our whole community, which not only consists of developers but also millions of users.

How many potential mentors have agreed to mentor this year?

1-5 for 2020. Each year is different

How will you keep mentors engaged with their students?

Our mentors are experienced long-time contributors to Open Source, to openSUSE in particular, and most of them have already participated in previous GSoC iterations, either as a student or as a mentor. openSUSE mentors and our administration team, are prepared and willing to build long-term relationships with their students, which focuses on setting goals, expectations, tracking and reporting the progress through agile collaboration. We describe thoroughly what we expect from a good mentor in our mentoring guidelines: http://101.opensuse.org/mentor/ Every year at the openSUSE Conference, our GSoC mentors can and meet to discuss our participation. To share our experiences during the program and to address challenges, we'll organize a bi-weekly mentor and a final retrospective meeting.

How will you help your students stay on schedule to complete their projects?

We believe in putting the Student's needs first. Mentoring is about them, not about the mentors or openSUSE's needs. So we always emphasize the mentee's need for learning, purpose, and fun. We encourage proposals that set clear goals for the project and expectations from students. Mentors are required to set up regular milestones that are reviewed and celebrated together. We believe that communicating on a regular schedule (daily at least) is what bonds mentors/mentee and we consider the consistency of that relationship very important. The administration team is focused on providing the best infrastructure for nurturing these relationships with tooling, marketing and guidance through regular discussions with both mentors and mentees.

How will you get your students involved in your community during GSoC?

From the first day, we will integrate the students as valued members of our community with all rights and obligations. We emphasize the need for communication as the basis of all collaboration in an Open Source project by having students report (at least weekly) about their progress to our community including mid-term and retrospective blog posts for our news portal https://news.opensuse.org/ To promote the collaboration between the students, to share experiences and to address challenges, the administration team will organize bi-weekly student meetings. Additionally, we will encourage our students to attend our Conference (Oct. 13 - 16, 2020, in Nuremberg) where they will enjoy priority with our travel support program (https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Travel_Support_Program).

How will you keep students involved with your community after GSoC?

It's our belief that students join Open Source because of the technology, but they stay because of the people in the community. We emphasize selecting students with the intention of a long-term contribution to openSUSE and we train our mentors to focus on building a personal relationship with the student. Many of our previous students are still active in our community. We believe that meeting other students, mentors and collaborators in person was a big part of building that community relationship. To actively support the contribution afterward, we are prepared to offer students follow up projects before GSoC ends. Either with the same mentor or projects from our own mentoring program openSUSE 101 (http://101.opensuse.org).

Has your org been accepted as a mentor org in Google Summer of Code before?

Yes

Which years did your org participate in GSoC?

2020, 2018, 2017, 2016, , 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, , 2009, 2008, , 2006,

For each year your organization has participated, counts of successful and total students:

2020: 3/3 2018: 2/2 2017: 5/5 2016: 6/6 2014: 14/14 2013: 10/12 2012: 9/12 2011: 13/14 2009: 6/9 2008: n/n 2006: n/n

If your org has applied for GSoC before but not been accepted, select the years:

2015

What year was your project started? 2005

Where does your source code live?

https://github.com/openSUSE

Is your organization part of any government?

No

# Open source license

GPLv2

# Organization Category

Operating Systems

# Tech Tags

Linux, Python, Perl, rpm, javascript

# Topic Tags

Tools, Operating Systems, software quality, build tools, containers

# IRC Channel

https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:IRC_list

# Mailing List

https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Mailing_lists

Email

[email protected]

Blog

https://news.opensuse.org/

Twitter

https://twitter.com/@opensuse

Short Description

The openSUSE project is a community effort to enhance and promote the use of Linux. openSUSE creates one of the world's best Linux distributions, as well as a variety of tools.

Long Description

The openSUSE project is a worldwide effort that promotes the use of Linux everywhere. openSUSE creates one of the world's best Linux distributions, as well as a variety of tools, such as OBS, OpenQA, Kiwi, YaST, OSEM, Uyuni, all working together in an open, transparent and friendly manner as part of the worldwide Free and Open Source Software community. Distributions include a rolling release (Tumbleweed), a stable annual release (Leap) and operating systems for embedded, cloud and containers through MicroOS and Kubic.

The project is controlled by its community and relies on the contributions of individuals, working as testers, writers, translators, usability experts, artists and ambassadors or developers. The project embraces a wide variety of technology, people with different levels of expertise, speaking different languages and having different cultural backgrounds.