How to persuade us that you're going to be a good GSoC student

It is that time of the year again, and people are applying for Google Summer of Code positions. It's great to see a big crowd of newcomers. This article explains what sort of students are welcome in GSoC from the point of view of Trojitá, a fast Qt IMAP e-mail client. I suspect that many other projects within KDE share my views, but it's best to ask them. Hopefully, this post will help students understand what we are looking for, and assist in deciding what project to work for.

Finding a motivation

As a mentor, my motivation in GSoC is pretty simple — I want to attract new contributors to the project I maintain. This means that I value long-term sustainability above fancy features. If you are going to apply with us, make sure that you actually want to stick around. What happens when GSoC terminates? What happens when GSoC terminates and the work you've been doing is not ready yet? Do you see yourself continuing the work you've done so far? Or is it going to become an abandonware, with some cash in your pocket being your only reward? Who is going to maintain the code which you worked hard to create?

Selecting an area of work

This is probably the most important aspect of your GSoC involvement. You're going to spend three months of full time activity on some project, a project you might have not heard about before. Why are you doing this — is it only about the money, or do you already have a connection to the project you've selected? Is the project trying to solve a problem that you find interesting? Would you use the results of that project even without the GSoC?

My experience shows that it's best to find a project which fills a niche that you find interesting. Do you have a digital camera, and do you think that a random photo editor's interface sucks? Work on that, make the interface better. Do you love listening to music? Maybe your favorite music player has some annoying bug that you could fix. Maybe you could add a feature to, say, synchronize the playlist with your cell phone (this is just an example, of course). Do you like 3D printing? Help improve an existing software for 3D printing, then. Are you a database buff? Is there something you find lacking in, e.g., PostgreSQL?

Either way, it is probably a good idea to select something which you need to use, or want to use for some reason. It's of course fine to e.g. spend your GSoC term working on an astronomy tool even though you haven't used one before, but unless you really like astronomy, then you should probably choose something else. In case of Trojitá, if you have been using GMail's web interface for the past five years and you think that it's the best thing since sliced bread, well, chances are that you won't enjoy working on a desktop e-mail client.

Pick something you like, something which you enjoy working with.

Making a proposal

An excellent idea is to make yourself known in advance. This does not happen by joining the IRC channel and saying "I want to work on GSoC", or mailing us to let us know about this. A much better way of getting involved is through showing your dedication.

Try to play with the application you are about to apply for. Do you see some annoying bug? Fix it! Does it work well? Use the application more; you will find bugs. Look at the project's bug tracker, maybe there are some issues which people are hitting. Do you think that you can fix it? Diving into bug fixing is an excellent opportunity to get yourself familiar with the project's code base, and to make sure that our mentors know the style and pace of your work.

Now that you have some familiarity with the code, maybe you can already see opportunities for work besides what's already described on the GSoC ideas wiki page. That's fine — the best proposals usually come from students who have found them on their own. The list of ideas is just that, a list of ideas, not an exhaustive cookbook. There's usually much more what can be done during the course of the GSoC. What would be most interesting area for you? How does it fit into the bigger picture?

After you've thought about the area to work on, now it's time to write your proposal. Start early, and make sure that you talk about your ideas with your prospective mentors before you spend three hours preparing a detailed roadmap. Define the goals that you want to achieve, and talk with your mentors about them. Make sure that the work fits well with the length and style of the GSoC.

And finally, be sure that you stay open and honest with your mentoring team. Remember, this is not a contest of writing a best project proposal. For me, GSoC is all about finding people who are interested in working on, say, Trojitá. What I'm looking for are honest, fair-behaving people who demonstrate willingness to learn new stuff. On top of that, I like to accept people with whom I have already worked. Hearing about you for the first time when I read your GSoC proposal is not a perfect way of introducing yourself. Make yourself known in advance, and show us how you can help us make our project better. Show us that you want to become a part of that "we".