We just get the word from Google that FOSSi Foundation has been selected to participate in Google Summer of Code 2017 . Just as last year, we are very happy about this great opportunity to mentor students around the world who want to contribute to FOSSi projects. Last year we had three excellent students who all made great contributions and we look forward to meet new students this year.
Right now we are looking for both mentors and students.
Mentors
As we are an umbrella organization for a number of projects in the Open Source Silicon domain, we are looking for mentors who have expertise in different areas. If you're interested in becoming a mentor, you are most welcome to contact us with ideas related to your own project. This is a great way to get the chance to find a new long-time contributor to your favorite project. Keeping the students interested in contributing to open source projects even after GSoC is over is a stated goal of the program, and we have seen over the years a number of students who started out as GSoC participants and stayed in the community.
As a mentor, you are expected to contribute your time and expertise to help the student reach the project goals. No project or student is the same, but it is expected to invest around five hours each week when the student is actively working on the project. The reward for mentoring a student is a nice t-shirt, a certificate from Google, an extra experience for your CV and a big thank you from the community. More information about the role of the mentors can be found here. Also note that as a first-time mentor for FOSSi Foundation, you will be co-mentoring with an experienced mentor. This is a precaution for the student, in the unlikely case that you will not be able to fulfill your obligations as a mentor
Students
The other side of the coin is the student, who is the real star of the GSoC program. GSoC is open to students from all over the world, and we welcome anyone who is interested in working on Open Source Silicon.
To start things off, we have prepared a list of project ideas. As a student you are free to base your project on one of these ideas, but remember that it is your idea we are looking for, and you should come up with an idea that you want to work on. Your job is to write a realistic project proposal to show us that you have a good idea of the work involved, and discuss the idea with us to get feedback. Our job is to match you up with a suitable mentor. As there are more student proposals than we have seats, a well-written project idea is important for us to judge whether we should choose you over someone else. It is also a good idea to get involved with the community early on to get a better feeling for what kind of project you want to do, and what already exists. For more general information about what it takes to be a GSoC student, there are several guides available on the GSoC site, for example here
Whether you're an aspiring student or mentor, feel free to contact us, either through the private GSoC-specific mailing list gsoc@fossi-foundation.org or through the public discussion mailing list. We are also available at #librecores on freenode if you're an IRC user.
We would also like to let you know that our good friends at Tim Videos and LowRISC also got accepted into GSoC and have projects related to Open Source Silicon
Looking forward to meet you all!