This post is the fourth and final introduction to the Fedora Summer Coding interns Class of Summer 2019. In this interview, we’ll meet Niharika Shrivastava and Divyansh Kamboj, who are working on projects to improve Fedora module package metadata and add additional security hardening to containers, respectively.

Niharika Shrivastava: libmodulemd

Niharika Shrivastava: Selected for "Extend unit tests for libmodulemd" for Outreachy 2019 with Fedora Project
Niharika Shrivastava

Niharika Shrivastava (orionstar25) is adding localization support for Fedora translation tools to the libmodulemd project. libmodulemd is a C Library for manipulating module metadata files. She was selected for Outreachy 2019.

We asked Niharika a few questions as she prepares for her next three months working with Stephen Gallagher, her mentor for the summer.

Tell us a bit about yourself!

I am from India, and I currently stay in Mumbai (but I wish to settle somewhere close to the Northern Lights someday). I’m pursuing Bachelors in Information Technology from the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad. I’ve just finished my pre-final year.

Fun fact time: I love to sing and am highly fascinated by the night sky (Niharika means a “Nebula”).

How did you hear about Outreachy?

I had heard about GSoC during my 1st year of college, in a talk given by a senior, who was a GSoCer in FOSSASIA then. I decided to apply for GSoC in my 2nd year when with some magic googling, I came across Outreachy. I had then applied with Mozilla for both the programs, but unfortunately wasn’t selected. After that, I decided to streamline my efforts and applied for Outreachy for the current round, and here I am!

What caught your attention about Fedora? How does it align with your personal interests?

I’m primarily an Ubuntu user and I love the control a terminal window gives me. I realized that I was more fluent in C++/C and Python than JavaScript, and that’s when I landed upon my project: “Extend unit tests for libmodulemd“. While it eventually required me to triple boot my machine (Windows + Ubuntu + Fedora), the intuitive code base and my mentor’s constant feedback made me passionate about contributing to Fedora.

What are you looking forward to most during this GSoC round?

This would be my first intern ever, let alone a remote one. Apart from further honing my skills, I also look forward to learning some essential soft skills and network with people from across the globe. Since mine is an independent project, I’d love to learn from other interns on how they’re tackling their tasks.

Where do you see yourself after you complete this GSoC round?

Mentally, I’d want to see myself more focused and confident, and have no self doubts about my capability.

Academically, I wish to undertake more research projects (like this) that affect the people directly. I also want to pursue higher studies. But most importantly, I feel that I would be in good standing to encourage women everywhere to participate in such diversity programs and expand their horizons.

Physically, I hope to see all of you at Flock 2019! 😀

Who is your favorite Marvel superhero / superheroine?

I AM GROOT. (But that was a tough one.)

Anything you want to add?

Question: Do you want a Red Hat?

Answer: Yes, I’ll take two please.

Divyansh Kamboj: SECCOMP profile generation tool for Podman

Divyansh Kamboj (weirdwiz) is working on a SECCOMP profile generation tool for Podman. This project builds a tool to watch syscalls made within a container and generate a seccomp profile for this specific container to further harden security. This includes commands added to Podman to launch the container and collect a set of syscalls either through strace, or auditing, or similar tracing technologies. Divyansh was selected for Google Summer of Code 2019.

We asked Divyansh a few questions as he prepares for his next three months working with Daniel Walsh and Valentin Rothberg, his mentors for the summer.

Tell us a bit about yourself!

I’m an 18 year old student at Jaypee Institute of Information Technology. I study computer science. I love to explore and learn new things.

How did you hear about GSoC?

I heard about GSoC from the senior students of my college. They said it was an incredible learning experience and they had lots of fun participating in it.

What caught your attention about Fedora? How does it align with your personal interests?

The Fedora community is very friendly and helping. The projects were very interesting and looked fun to do.

What are you looking forward to most during this GSoC round?

I am looking forward to working with my mentors to implement our ideas for this project.

Where do you see yourself after you complete this GSoC round?

After the program I see myself becoming a better programmer, and mentoring new students to get started into open source and help them getting started and self sufficient.

Who is your favorite Marvel superhero / superheroine?

My favorite super hero is Thor. He is one of the strongest Avengers, and quite fun.

Thanks and good luck to Niharika and Divyansh as they begin their project work next week! Congrats to all selected Fedora Summer Coding 2019 students.