Google Summer of Code Application 2009

Link ID
osgeo

Group Name (required)
OSGeo - Open Source Geospatial Foundation

Home Page URL (required)
http://www.osgeo.org/

Public Email (required)
soc@lists.osgeo.org

Description (required)
OSGeo is an incorporated not-for-profit organization serving as an umbrella organization for the Open Source Geospatial community in general and 16 projects in particular:

Web Mapping: deegree, Mapbender, MapBuilder, MapGuide Open Source, MapServer, OpenLayers

Desktop Applications: GRASS GIS, OSSIM, Quantum GIS, gvSIG

Geospatial Libraries: FDO, GDAL/OGR, GEOS, GeoTools, MetaCRS

Metadata Catalog: GeoNetwork

Other Projects: Public Geospatial Data, Education and Curriculum

Why is your group applying to participate? What do you hope to gain by participating? (required)
We hope to get more students excited about open source geospatial development. This will help to grow the development community and of course tangibly advance particular projects. Additionally by way of the level of exposure that SoC provides we aim to further extend the use, development, and teaching & training of open source GIS at universities worldwide. This will help to prepare a new generation of developers for industry and government agencies capable of introducing and implementing viable open source geospatial technology, to the benefit of all.

What is the main public mailing list for your group? (required)
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists

Where is the main IRC channel for your group? (required)
The primary OSGeo channel is #osgeo on the irc.freenode.net network.

member projects maintain their own IRC channels:
 * http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/IRC

What criteria do you use to select the members of your group? Please be as specific as possible. (required)
The project administrator is appointed by the OSGeo board at the beginning of the year. The project administrator asks for one or two people he trusts to be the backup administrators. Mentors are selected by project steering committees and development teams based on their reputation as skilled developers, domain experience, previously demonstrated ability to support new project developers, and stated willingness to devote time to the mentoring process. We also try very hard to match up the student working on a specific module or tool with a developer with the best expertise in the relevant area. We have in the past not voted up an otherwise good student project if there was no mentor capable of overseeing the project from a technical standpoint. Fortunately we have had a strong response from the developer pool so this has not been a major problem.

Has your group participated previously? If so, please summarize your involvement and any past successes and failures.
OSGeo participated in GSoC in 2008. Eleven OSGeo projects participated and were in general very successful. OSGeo didn't send delegates to the Mentor Summit due to the busy schedules of the mentors.

See http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SoC_Report_2008 for a full report. -- dead URL !!

OSGeo participated in GSoC in 2007. Six OSGeo projects participated and were generally very successful. OSGeo also sent one delegate to the Mentor Summit in 2007. See http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SoC_Report_2007 for a full report. We also opened up a demo theatre track highlighting SoC work at our foss4g conference that year.

OSGeo was formed in early 2006 and did not participate in GSoC prior to 2007. However, Refractions Research did participate in 2006 on behalf of the GeoTools, uDig, and PostGIS projects which now participate through OSGeo. Most of the the previously participating mentors and administrators continue to be involved in this years OSGeo GSoC effort.

What license does your organization use? (required)
Each member project uses their own, but all OSGeo projects are required to use an OSI approved license. (see http://www.osgeo.org/incubator/process/evaluation.html)


 * Member projects specifically use: GPL >=2, LGPL, MIT/X, ...

What is the URL to the ideas list of your organization? (required)
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2009_Ideas

What is the main development mailing list for your group? (required)
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists

What is the application template you would like contributors to your organization to use. (required)
Name:

Country:

School and degree:

Email:

Phone:

OSGeo project(s):

Title:

Describe your idea
 * 1) Introduction
 * 2) Background
 * 3) The idea
 * 4) Project plan (how do you plan to spend your summer?)
 * 5) Future ideas

Explain how your SoC task would benefit the OSGeo member project and more generally the OSGeo Foundation as a whole:

Please provide details of previous GIS experience:

Please provide details of any previous involvement with GIS programming and other software programming:

Please provide details of general computing experience: (operating systems you use on a day-to-day basis, languages you could write a program in, hardware, networking experience, etc.)

Please tell us why you are interested in GIS and open source software:

Please tell us why you are interested in your specific coding project:

Please tell us why you are interested in the specific software project that you wish to work with:

Do you understand this is a serious commitment, equivalent to a full-time paid summer internship or summer job?

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing contributors? (required)
In order to minimize the chance of disappearing students we will ensure that the OSGeo administrative contact and the mentors have full contact information (email, home phone, etc) so that we can keep in touch with them at all times. We also stress to our students that this is a Job, as opposed to a school project.

In addition, we will make our reporting requirements clear up front. Letting the students know that we will require a weekly progress report to be posted to OSGeo's SoC mailing list (cc the member project's development mailing list), participation in public IRC channels and project mailing lists will all help ensure ongoing commitment to the work. Mentors are required to make sure that happens and that the lines of communication are kept open from beginning to end.

Other possibilities include:
 * 1) Having potential students work with their potential mentor to prepare a brief plan for the implementation of their project.
 * 2) Setting milestones that need to be reached by the student. These milestones would be defined before the student's work begins. A student would subsequently write a brief e-mail informing the OSGeo SoC mailing list (cc project-specific mailing list) when they have reached each milestone, giving a brief description of the work completed to that date. This is in addition to the weekly progress reports which are intended to be more casual and actively soliciting feedback.
 * 3) Selecting students that have shown previous interest in the geospatial field and free software. A student who already has a (reviewable) FOSS track record has a much higher chance of success.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing members? (required)
Project steering committees will appoint replacement mentors if existing mentors become unavailable or unresponsive during the project period. Where possible, we also plan to have backup mentors for projects so the backup mentor can fill in for, or replace the mentor in case of changing circumstances.

Among all the OSGeo mailing lists there are 14,000 subscribers, indicating a good pool of people to draw from if required. Due to relatively high member project code and personnel cross-over, in a pinch a mentor from another OSGeo project could usefully help out.

What steps will you take to encourage contributors to interact with your community before, during, and after the program? (required)
The steps taken depend on the individual projects. As an example, last year we required weekly reports and encouraged the students to interact with us on the project mailing lists and IRC channels. We also encourage the developers and users who are not mentors to provide additional advice and feedback to the participating student and help with testing the students contributions during and after the program. In general other developers have not been shy about sharing their opinions, guidance, and advice on the member project development lists.

Furthermore the mentors are encouraged to actively involve the students in the community by having the student interact with the mentor through the community (public) channels rather then one-on-one. This also assists with student integration into the project and alleviates the disappearing-mentor problem.

What will you do to ensure that your accepted contributors stick with the project after the program concludes? (required)
The steps taken depend on the individual projects, as example last year many projects asked that students act as a "module maintainer" for their work. This role has an expected level of support associated with it.

Apart from that, we are relying on the open development process and the appreciation that students will receive for implementing these needed features to provide positive feedback for the students. The projects will be encouraging the students to take ownership of their work, and to contribute in other areas they may be interested in. In some cases students may also have opportunities for future contract work if they make a good impression on community members.

Please select your backup group administrator.
Backup administrators:
 * Hamish Bowman (melange: hamish.bowman)
 * Landon Blake (melange: sunburned_surveyor)