The Fedora Project is pleased to announce that this summer will mark our TENTH year participating in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program! We are happy to be accepted again as an organization this year and are looking forward to working with many bright and excited students across the world on many parts of Fedora.

This year, Fedora has Google Summer of Code project proposals for Fedora CommOps, Pagure, Hubs, Project Atomic, and a few others.

Wait, what is Google Summer of Code?

Never heard of Google Summer of Code before? The website gives a short and sweet definition about what it’s all about.

Google Summer of Code is a global program focused on bringing more student developers into open source software development. Students work with an open source organization on a 3 month programming project during their break from school.

Getting involved: First steps

Does spending your summer getting paid to work on Fedora sound like something awesome to you? If you’re interested in participating in the Google Summer of Code, there are a few steps you must take before beginning the application process. The official website for Google Summer of Code has a “Getting started” page that answers some of the basic questions that decide if you are eligible to take part.

General eligibility

1. Must be at least 18 years old at time of registration.
2. Must be enrolled in or accepted into an accredited institution including (but not necessarily limited to) colleges, universities, masters programs, PhD programs and undergraduate programs as of the GSoC Student Acceptance Date (April 22, 2016).
3. Must be eligible to work in their country of residence during duration of program.
4. Must be a resident of a country not currently embargoed by the United States.

You can read the full terms for students on the website.

Get introduced to Fedora

Once you have determined your eligibility to take part in the Google Summer of Code, you should turn to the GSoC Fedora organization page for more information on getting started. This page has all the important information you will need to introduce yourself to the project and apply. Reading the entire page is very important!

Why work on Fedora?

Our project is large and diverse. We are very experienced at working with new contributors and helping them be successful.

Many long-time contributors continue to be around, lending expertise and mentoring. People who stay around the community and do good work are noticed. They get hired for jobs from it, including being hired by Red Hat. Past Google Summer of Code students were hired by Red Hat, as well as interns in various positions. This is just an example, as experience and reputation in the Fedora Project communities is influential on your career in many ways.

As long-standing communities with many facets, it is possible for you to find many rewarding sub-projects to work on.

You should know that contributing to FOSS doesn’t require you to have super programming skills, or super-anything else. You just need be interested and curious enough, and be willing to become comfortable being productively lost. This is the state of learning through finding your way around and figuring things out.

Where to look

There are a few wiki pages that you will need to reference when getting started with GSoC 2016 as well as during the summer. The GSoC 2016 page is the “portal” for all things Fedora. Reading, understanding, and checking this page often will be important for your success.

Where to communicate

Communication is an important part of any open source project, and Fedora is no different. You can read more about general guidelines and etiquette  and Beginner’s Guide to IRC for interacting with the community on IRC, mailing lists, and more. If it is your first time contributing to open source or your first time contributing to Fedora, it is worth reading over those guidelines.

Next, once you are familiar with the guidelines, you will need to subscribe to the summer-coding and devel mailing lists. The summer-coding list is the first stop for questions, getting started with GSoC, or anything related to the program. The devel mailing list is only for questions or collaboration related to actual programming tasks or problems.

Choosing a project

Once you have chosen a project, you can find a list of summer coding ideas on the wiki. Browse through the list of projects and look for anything that looks interesting to you. It will be important for you to choose something that is personally interesting to you so you are working on something you are passionate and interested about.

Create an application

Applications for the Google Summer of Code projects by Fedora are accepted on the wiki. In order to add an application page, you will first need to register in the Fedora Account System, if you have not already. Once you are logged in the wiki, navigate to the following page, substituting USERNAME with your own FAS username.

https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=GSOC_2016/Student_Application_USERNAME&action=edit

For your application, use the application template for your application. Copy and paste the content from the template page to your wiki page. Edit in your information and answers, and then at the bottom, categorize the page for GSoC 2016. To categorize the page, add the following line in at the bottom.

[[Category:Summer coding 2016]]

After doing these things, save the page (don’t forget to “watch” the page when saving). Let others know about your submission by forwarding your application URL with a brief description about your project proposal to the summer-coding mailing list.

Apply soon!

Applications for Google Summer of Code open from March 14 – 25, 2016. Submit your applications in this time frame and stay tuned for hearing back from Fedora about your application status! We’re looking forward to working with students on open source projects in Fedora, and we can’t wait to see all the awesome things we can accomplish together.