Summer of Code 2009 Student Application Template

Introduction

This template is meant as a general guideline to help students create an application for the Google Summer of Code 2009

After you have applied, come say hi to us in our IRC channel! Communication is important to us!

The template

Please try to provide as much information as possible to convince us that you will be able to complete this project successfully

When answering these questions, please try to explain as good as possible and "sell yourself" as we might use the answers you provide as basis for selecting whom to accept as students. Your answers will not become public, but will be read by Rockbox committers/gsoc mentors.

About You

1. What other names or aliases do you go by/we should be expecting to see you as in IRC/forums/mailing lists?
2. Which school/college/university are you currently attending? What year are you in and what is your current major/focus?
3. Do you currently own a DAP? Have you owned any in the past?
4. Have you previously been involved in Rockbox? If so, how?
5. Why do you want to work on Rockbox?
6. Where are you located, and what between which hours do you anticipate being active and available to work on your project?
7. How many hours per week do you have planned/scheduled for your gsoc work, should it get accepted? Are there any vacations, events, or other time-consuming unrelated stuff going on? (nothing here will reject your application, however we just do not want to be surprised)
8. Have you built Rockbox yourself from source before? If not, you will want to go ahead and set up an development environment and build Rockbox at least once as your qualification task will involve this basic task. See the "For Developers" section on DocsIndex for help (and don't be afraid to use the IRC channel if there are other issues).
9. What programming experience do you have, and in which languages? If those don't include C, please tell us how you intend to deal with this lack. If possible, please point us to a code sample that you wrote that you feel demonstrates that you know what you are doing.
10. Do you have any previous open source experience that you can point to?

About Your Project

Abstract :

Short summary about what you plan to do. This should describe your project in a few lines in a not too technical way

Detailed Description :

The detailed description should consist of several parts:

Task description and subdivision:

Describe your project in as much detail as possible (only relevant details, no need to mention e.g. that you will set up a build environment) Try to subdivide the project in logical sub-projects, and describe them separately

Benefit to the Rockbox project

Briefly explain why your project is useful for rockbox. Try to "sell" your project to us. Why would we pick your project before anyone else's? It is likely that we will receive (many) more applications than we can accept, so we will only pick the top contenders.

Milestones and Project plan (this can follow the task subdivision, but this is not absolutely necessary)

Subdivide the working period in several parts, not more than one to three weeks long. For each of these parts, describe what you plan to do in this time, and which deliverables will be finished at the end of it. We know and understand that there will inevitably be deviations from these time estimates, but please try to make them accurate as possible.

1. Do you expect that your project will need more work or maintenance after the GSoC period ends? What do you think are the chances of you sticking around and helping out with that and perhaps other projects?

You and the Community

1. How do you propose you will be keeping everyone informed of your progress, problems, and any questions you might have over the course of the project?
2. What expectations do you have of your mentor(s) as well as the community itself?

Misc

1. Is there anything else that we should know that might make us like you or your project more?