Every Computer Science undergraduate who might have heard about GSoC
would not merely be satisfied of hearing it. Definitely, there will be
some tries to participate in it. It is not a plenty of undergraduates'
dream to getting selected to Google Sumer of Code, certainly there is a
lot more than a plenty.
In
University of Moratuwa,
where I study, GSoC is not just another event in the world of Computer
Science students. It has become a part of their culture. Creating
participants in GSoC in massive numbers is just-another practice of the
university activities. All the related field students (students from
department of computer science and the faculty of Information
Technology) work hard to get selected in this prestigious event in the
world open source calender. University staff, past GSoCers and Google
Student Ambassadors encourage undergraduates to apply for the event
expecting not the stipend but targeting on the massive reputation that
a student can gain from it.
Why UoM is special at GSoC?
UoM
is holding the record for participating most number of students for the
competitive event for impressive 7 consecutive years with 265
participants for all previous 9 years since the inception!
These numbers were steadily increasing over all past years even during the war era. Even
Chris DiBona, Director of Social Impact and Open Source at Google mentioned his excitement over these numbers during his speech at his "
Decade of Google Summer Code" speech at University of Moratuwa.
How did I motivate?
It
is said that "Eighty percent of the success is showing up". It wasn't
false that much if you once look at a GSoCer's ability to show up. They
are pretty good at what they are showing up. They are mastered of the
field and always got highlighted in the industry as well as in the
university.
In the very first year of the Uni life, i could attend
to a small meet-up of past GSoCers and newbies. They were from Fedora
project and encouraged us to apply to Fedora project in the GSoC 2012.
I was like... "What the hell is Fedora?" and "What is the relationship between Fedora and Google?"
I
looked into some documentation of fedora and projects in the GSoC. I
would be lying if I said I could understand a single project in the
list.
Well... Time passed, promoted to the level two in the
faculty. Again, looked in to the projects list. Unfortunately, it was
the exam season and couldn't allocate time to understand optional worse,
neglecting the necessary worst.
At the time I moved to level 3, I
was somewhat matured about the scopes of projects and the amount of
contribution I had to made to yield some results.
Selecting Mozilla
My answer for the question "Why Mozilla ?" in the proposal template form.
There
are several reasons behind selecting Mozilla. I was using Firefox and
loved its designs ever since I got hands to a computer. Another reason
was my desire to commit for a project that would cause cheer of a lot of
users. Contributing for a project in Mozilla that actually used by
millions of people all around the world, causes a feeling of
satisfaction by knowing that there can be someone making use of some
code snippets I wrote. I always enjoy volunteering. Satisfaction becomes
bigger, when the project becomes bigger. Finally, I would happy to
repute my GSoC participation with a big brand name in the internet like
“Mozilla”.
Start Contribution
Mozilla
was one of the most forefront open source projects in the world. It has
thousands of contributers, contributing to various technologies and
perspectives.
Designers, Coders in tens of projects, bug
reporters, bloggers contribute to the progress of Mozilla. I would say
that, at the first time I visited to this website, I was amazed. My
question was, "Do they have a site for this thing too?"
WhatCanIdoForMozilla
It has provided you a lot of alternatives to match with your preferences. Mine was JavaScript and Thunderbird Calendar!
Once I got my choice..........
Okay, here is the tricky part...
Once
I got my choice, I moved to the melange site! Not to the Mozilla
developer network! I wanted to see that was my selection correct. I
wanted to make sure that is there a possibility to have another GSoC
project from this project. I went through project list of 2-3 years. yes
there was. So I was correct! There was several projects in last years
and seemed a possibility was there. (Of course, you can suggest a
project by looking at the codebase or the Bugzilla - the bug tracking
system of the Mozilla, but notice I was a newbie to the giant project)
I went through
Thunderbird's documentations and
Bugzilla to find out available bugs. I found a
nice documentation describing where to start and how to find out new bugs and get then assigned.
Have
to say that, Mozilla has the best stored knowledge in world of open
source I found so far. Their developer network, provides you solution
for any sort of related technical matters.
After going through a lot of documentations (and a lot of them) I thought to focus on the
Thunderbird's calendar extension, Lightning project.
-This article is getting longer with my excitement grows- have to make this short-
I
had to search for easier bugs in bugzilla, and a get one of them
assigned to myself. Certainly, I didn't have authority to get a bug
assigned to myself. I had to comment in the section asking from someone
to assign the bug to me. Once you get a "New start bug" to work on, you
can contact the mentor assigned to the bug to get any doubts clarified.
After
I got some experience with the codebase I turned to the GSoC. Went
through the project statement, contacted the mentor for clarifications
and glad to say that they were really responsive! Sometimes, they may
take some 24s of hours to reply, but always give them arounf 48 hrs to
reply for a mail. They also have their own works other than
volunteering. :)
It's done...
Preparations and orientations were finished. Now this is the time for discovering the exact meaning of "Coding".
Hope,
I will be able to achieve my goals and contribute to the Internet giant
in my capacity to make open source more productive and Internet a
better place.
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