Applications for the Google Summer of Code are now open! I have always been intending to apply for GSoC since I heard of it probably last year. Unfortunately though last year - I just couldn't spare the time to apply to GSoC. I really am regretting this now. The application and pre-application phase of GSoC in itself provide an amazing learning experience.
I have relied heavily on Open Source for all my Computer Science needs. Emacs, TeX, Unix, ..., all the tools I am so used to are thanks to legends like Richard Stallman, Knuth, Dennis Ritchie and the remarkable Open Source vision. Every time I log into my Linux system, I can't help looking upto OSS for giving me the flexibility and freedom to get my things done with such ease and style. Truly the best things in the world are free. And while I have often thought of making contributions big or small to Open Source, I never really got around to it till GSoC'13 arrived. This time round I had really made up my mind to apply.
...And I am really glad that I did. There are 177 mentoring organizations in participating in this year's GSoC - thus offering lots of diversity to probably satisfy anyone's interests. After scouring the list for long hours, I came across Astropy under the Python Software Foundation. I have always wanted to explore Astronomy while also building up on my programming skills and applying here presented me with the wonderful opportunity to get the best of both worlds this summer! Thus began my application period filled with goodies : I joined mailing lists, idled on the IRC but most importantly I created a git-hub account. I learnt to fork a repository, work on a patch and open a pull request. It was also immensely satisfying when my patch was finally merged.
I can't thank GSoC enough for introducing me to the exciting world of open source. I am really itching to make more contributions, I also found a couple of other interesting repos like NLTK. But with exams round the corner I will probably have to wait for a couple of weeks, before I dive deeper into the exciting world of open source. :-)
I have relied heavily on Open Source for all my Computer Science needs. Emacs, TeX, Unix, ..., all the tools I am so used to are thanks to legends like Richard Stallman, Knuth, Dennis Ritchie and the remarkable Open Source vision. Every time I log into my Linux system, I can't help looking upto OSS for giving me the flexibility and freedom to get my things done with such ease and style. Truly the best things in the world are free. And while I have often thought of making contributions big or small to Open Source, I never really got around to it till GSoC'13 arrived. This time round I had really made up my mind to apply.
...And I am really glad that I did. There are 177 mentoring organizations in participating in this year's GSoC - thus offering lots of diversity to probably satisfy anyone's interests. After scouring the list for long hours, I came across Astropy under the Python Software Foundation. I have always wanted to explore Astronomy while also building up on my programming skills and applying here presented me with the wonderful opportunity to get the best of both worlds this summer! Thus began my application period filled with goodies : I joined mailing lists, idled on the IRC but most importantly I created a git-hub account. I learnt to fork a repository, work on a patch and open a pull request. It was also immensely satisfying when my patch was finally merged.
I can't thank GSoC enough for introducing me to the exciting world of open source. I am really itching to make more contributions, I also found a couple of other interesting repos like NLTK. But with exams round the corner I will probably have to wait for a couple of weeks, before I dive deeper into the exciting world of open source. :-)
