Google Summer of Code 2013 Ideas

Back to the main OSGeo Google Summer of Code 2013 wiki page.

See also ideas from 2010, 2011, and 2012.

OSGeo Google Summer of Code 2013

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation would like to extend a welcome to all SoC students. On this page you will find links to a host of ideas organized by project. You will find ideas ranging from the depths of computer science graph theory to the heights of visualization. One thing all these ideas have in common is lots and lots of spatial data.

These ideas are *only* to motivate you, and serve as example of the kind of hills we want to charge up. Your own ideas are more than welcomed - they are encouraged. We view you as the next wave of open source leaders; show us what you've got.

If you need more information on how to apply you can contact all the mentoring organisations via the OSGeo-SoC mailing list (see below)

There is a Google SoC flyer to look at and post in appropriate places and an OSGeo flavoured one as well (TODO: update to 2013).

Ok, OSGeo is involved in working with maps and things, but what kind of projects does it really do? Have a look at the live blog feed to see what people are working on right now.

Important dates

The official timeline

April 8: Google announces accepted organizations.

If OSGeo is accepted as an organization for Google Summer of Code, start talking to us earlier rather than later.

April 22: Student applications open.

The earlier you start the more probable it is that you will be accepted!

There is two way feedback during the application process which really helps you improve and clarify your application before the final deadline. The better your involvement with your potential mentors during this period, the better your chances of being selected.

May 3: Student application deadline.
May 27: Accepted student proposals are announced and Community Bonding Period begins
June 17: Coding begins!

(you may unofficially start a week or two earlier if you know you'll have to take a week or two off during The Summer or you'll be sitting finals in the first week(s) of the program. This must be reflected in your application timeline)

July 29: Mid-term evaluation begins
September 16-23: Pencils down!
September 23-27: Final evaluations
September 27: Students begin submitting required code samples to Google
October 1: Final results announced

The ideas pages

[Check back often, it's a work in progress]

Each participating project's list of ideas is on the respective projects' wikis, with a short description of the project and what type of students would be interested in it:

OSGeo Foundation member projects

GRASS GIS SoC Ideas: GRASS GIS is an open source GIS focusing mainly on analysis. It is written as a collection of stand-alone C programs and has a new GUI written in wxPython. If you know Python, or want to implement algorithms in C take a look!

Quantum GIS SoC Ideas Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows. QGIS supports vector, raster, and database formats. It is written in C++ and Python.

OSSIM SoC Ideas: - OSSIM is a powerful suite of geospatial libraries and applications used to process imagery, maps, terrain, and vector data. The software has been under active development since 1996 and is deployed across a number of private, federal and civilian agencies. It is written in C++.

OSGeo4W: - OSGeo4W is a binary distribution of a broad set of open source geospatial software for Win32 environments (Windows 7, XP, etc).
- Idea: We need to extend support to x64 based platforms to handle larger datasets and circumvent memory restrictions. This is a distribution and packaging project which will involve most/all of OSGeo member projects. (ed. note: keep in mind that to fulfill GSoC requirements each project must have a majority coding component.)

gvSIG Ideas: gvSIG is a free GIS project for Desktop, PDAs, and mobile phones. The gvSIG project looks for students with Java skills that want to develop new ideas on any of these products.

Opticks Ideas: Opticks is an extensible remote sensing and imagery analysis desktop application. It provides a framework to process remote sensing data such as Hyperspectral (HSI), Multispectral (MSI), and Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery and video. The application is written in C++ and licensed under LGPL v2.1. Extensions are written using C++ or Python. You can review the available extensions and feature tour to get a better idea of what Opticks can do.

GEOS Ideas: GEOS (Geometry Engine - Open Source) is a C++ port of the JTS Topology Suite (JTS). It includes the OpenGIS Simple Features for SQL spatial predicate functions and spatial operators, as well as specific JTS enhanced topology functions.

Geoserver is a web server that allows you to serve maps and data from a variety of formats to standard clients such as web browsers and desk top GIS programs. This means that you can store your spatial data in almost any format you prefer but that your users do not need to know anything about GIS data. At the simplest level all they need is a web browser to see your maps exactly as you want. GeoServer is the reference implementation of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Feature Service (WFS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) standards, as well as a high performance certified compliant Web Map Service (WMS).

Geoserver will accept one idea, according to the developers' availability. Please contact them to get more information.

GDAL Ideas: GDAL is a C++ library for reading and writing geospatial data raster and vector formats.

PostGIS Ideas: PostGIS spatially enables the popular PostgreSQL object-relational database, allowing it to be used as a back-end database for geographic information systems (GIS) and web-mapping applications.

We expect ideas also from MapBender, ZOO-Project, GeoMOOSE...

Guest projects

Guest project:

istSOS Ideas: istSOS (Istituto Scienze della Terra Sensor Observation Service) is an implementation of the Sensor Observation Service (SOS) standard from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The development of istSOS was started in 2009 in order to provide a simple implementation of the SOS standard for the management, provision and integration of hydro-meteorological data collected in Canton Ticino (Switzerland). istSOS is entirely written in Python.

Guest students (accepted under OSGeo umbrella):

Mapnik Ideas: Mapnik is a Free Toolkit for developing mapping applications. It’s written in C++ and there are Python bindings to facilitate fast-paced agile development. It can comfortably be used for both desktop and web development, which was something I wanted from the beginning.

Mapnik students will be required to apply under OSGeo ~~or OpenStreetMap umbrella, according to the main topic of their project.~~ (oops, looks like it's just us this time)

OpenStreetMap Ideas: OSM is a project aimed squarely at creating and providing free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them. The project was started because most maps you think of as free actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using them in creative, productive or unexpected ways.

This year [if we're accepted] OpenStreetMap students will be hosted under OSGeo's GSoC umbrella. Talk to OSM, but apply with us. Begin your proposal description with "OSM: " so we know which way to direct it.

Which project do I choose?

Most of the software projects are available pre-built on our Live demo { DVD | USB stick | VirtualMachine } with project overviews and short tutorials where you can try everything out.

View the documents and download the ISO from http://live.osgeo.org

How to get in contact via mailing lists

Since OSGeo is an umbrella organisation for multiple projects, each project has their own discussion and development mailing lists.

Main OSGeo mailing lists of interest to students:

Please start here, when contacting us for the first time with questions about Google Summer of Code.

OSGeo SoC Mentors and Students - soc@lists.osgeo.org (http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/soc)
OSGeo Wide Discussion List - discuss@lists.osgeo.org (http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss)

Also see the Mailing Lists page for project specific lists, as well as the longer list at http://lists.osgeo.org.

How to get in contact via IRC

Primary channel:

irc://irc.freenode.net/#osgeo (Web based IRC client, alternative)

GSoC @ OSGeo inter-project discussions:

irc://irc.freenode.net/#osgeo-soc

Project irc channels:

Application questions we'll ask you

[Provisional]

All questions must be answered, no exceptions. Treat this as something between a formal job application and a scholarship application, because that's exactly what it is.

Name:

Country:

School and degree:

Email:

Phone:

OSGeo project(s):

Title:
(please include the name of the member project as part of
 the title, for example: "Gee Whiz Foobar 2001 for QGIS")

Describe your idea
  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. The idea
  4. Project plan (detailed timeline: how do you plan to spend your summer?)
  5. Future ideas / How can your idea be expanded? 

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

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 provide details of previous GIS experience:

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

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

Please tell us why you are interested in working for OSGeo
 and the software project you have selected:

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

Would your application contribute to your ongoing studies/
 degree? If so, how?

Please explain how you intend to continue being an active
 member of your project and/or OSGeo AFTER the summer is over:

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

Do you have any known time conflicts during the official coding
 period? (June 17 to Sept. 27)

What to expect during the summer

A group of past GSoC students, mentors, and Googlers have prepared this short book just for you:

Flip bits not Burgers: The Student's Guide to the Summer of Code -- READ THIS eBOOK

Be prepared to be in constant communication with your mentors and project

You and your mentors will decide on the specifics, but we will expect you and your mentor to communicate *a lot*. Part of the idea of SoC is to integrate you into the developer community, so you should get involved with them from the start. The more you communicate the easier it will be. Don't be afraid that the mentors will request your phone number. It is only to make sure that we can reach you in case of problems, like making sure you get paid.

University exams and semester terms vary widely, if we know in advance that you need a week off to study, or that you've already scheduled a short vacation to somewhere off the grid, that's fine and won't count against you. But you need to communicate this up front so we can make a plan to work around it.

Weekly reports

Yes, every week we expect to see a report posted to the soc@osgeo mailing list that at least answers the following questions:

What did you get done this week?
What do you plan on doing next week?
Are you blocked on anything?

These questions BTW are the same as are used in real-work, when developing with the Scrum development process. ;)

If you want, feel free to write *more*. But three sentences is the bare minimum. *IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU SEND YOUR PROGRESS REPORTS ON TIME*, if you don't send this email your mentors will start to get twitchy, and *especially* if they don't get any responses to their emails / don't see you in IRC. Twitchy mentors is not what we want. If you are blocked by finals, that's cool. We have all studied at some point, just tell us about it up front, be honest, and we'll work around it. If you don't know how to proceed and your mentor isn't answering *definitely* tell about it. The SoC project admins will always be available. Basically the point is that you open up the communication channels, and keep them open. That way you will have a super summer, and get paid ;)

Last year this weekly report proved to be very popular among the students and mentors alike, so we will keep it up.

Wiki page and blogs

In addition to weekly reports we require you to maintain a wiki or blog page for your project. You should store your weekly reports there and add other information, like how to compile and test your program. If applicable add screenshots and other nice info.

Wiki and/or blog space can and will be provided by OSGeo if your project doesn't have anything already set up for this.

We plan to link all of the students' blogs to the OSGeo Planet blog aggregator for maximum community exposure and hopefully early feedback from the experts who read it, which may save you a lot of time and trouble if, for example, some obscure wheel has already been invented by another partner project.

Final reports from those blogs and wiki pages will be collected into a OSGeoofcode posting about what everyone did during the summer, ensuring you long lasting fame and fortune. (Or failing that, a bit of public press, a bit of cash from Google, and a lot of gratitude and kudos from us, your peers.)

[Back to Google Summer of Code 2013 @ OSGeo]