Google Summer of Code Application 2015

@

http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2015

Application Status

Completed, with the text below

Timeline: http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/events/google/gsoc2015

Old applications

Base on 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and Google Summer of Code Application 2014

Profile

Organization id

osgeo

Organization name

OSGeo - Open Source Geospatial Foundation

Organization description

OSGeo is a non-profit organization serving as an umbrella organization for the Open Source Geospatial community in general and 33 code projects in particular:

Web Mapping: deegree, geomajas, GeoMoose, GeoServer, Mapbender, MapBuilder, MapFish, MapGuide Open Source, MapServer, OpenLayers, ZOO-Project, Team Engine

Desktop Applications: GRASS GIS, Quantum GIS, gvSIG, Opticks, KDE Marble

Geospatial Libraries: FDO, GDAL/OGR, GEOS, GeoTools, MetaCRS*, OSSIM, PostGIS, rasdaman

The following are sub-projects of MetaCRS: PROJ.4, GeoTIFF/libgeotiff, CS-Map, Proj4J, Proj4js, SpatialReference.org Metadata Catalogs: GeoNetwork, pycsw

Other (non-code) Projects: Public Geospatial Data, Education and Curriculum, Live Handout DVD

We host the annual FOSS4G conferences (this year two of them) with typical attendance of 500-1000+ geospatial developers, industry and government types, and researchers. Our mailing lists collectively go out to ~ 20,000 unique subscribers.

For GSoC we hope to act as an umbrella org for a number of other non-OSGeo FOSS geo projects, including pgRouting, PyWPS, istSOS, and uDig.

Main license

GNU General Public License (GPL)

Ideas list

Google Summer of Code 2015 Ideas

Mailing list

soc@lists.osgeo.org

Facebook page

Left blank

Veteran/New

Veteran

Questionnaire

If you chose "veteran" in the checkbox, please summarize your involvement in Google Summer of Code and the successes and challenges of your participation. Please also list your pass/fail rate for each year.

Year: pass/total 
2007: 13/19 
2008: 15/19 
2009: 17/20 
2010: 7/10 
2011: 19/21 
2012: 20/22 
2013: 21/22 
2014: 22/23

2014 has been the year that OSGeo accepted most students: 23, from 19 different software projects. It was another great time for cross-project collaboration, for visibility for all the participating projects, both OSGeo and guests. The veteran mentors have been a strong foundation, upon which students and new mentors could rely. OSGeo sent two representatives to the GSoC Reunion, as well as two lottery winner students.

In 2013, 21 of 22 students successfully completing their projects. It was a great year for the variety of software projects which took part under the OSGeo umbrella. We were glad that a bunch of small, newly formed geospatial projects joined our GSoC as guests and established links with the established OSGeo network, as well as to have more established projects like OpenStreetMap join us. We sent two delegates to the mentors' summit, who lead sessions on managing GSoC umbrella orgs and FOSS mapping. GSoC 2013 final report: http://www.osgeo.org/node/1410

In 2012, 20 of 22 students completing the summer. We provided GSoC-specific umbrella support for two smaller projects from outside of our Foundation. Successes: All in all our students were great and a lot of good work was completed -- perhaps the least remarkable-sounding but most important success we had is how smoothly everything ran in spite of handling our largest number of students yet. Many of our former students continue to be involved in our contributing projects' development and take on roles as mentors. A couple of the smaller external projects we had taken under our GSoC umbrella in the past are now participating in our incubation process to become full members of our Foundation. Challenges: Getting everyone to fill in their evaluations on time is always a challenge, but we're pleased to report that in 2013 we didn't have to resort to 3 AM phone calls to the other side of the world as everyone got theirs in on time, no small effort for an umbrella org! Unfortunately we had to fail one student at midterm, we took him on as a risk and had high hopes, but a combination of personality mismatch with his mentor, backup mentor and org admins not picking up on that early enough, and not a strong enough coding background lead to many diversions from the established timeline and only a few lines of useful code once the boilerplate commits were removed. This was especially disappointing as he was a friendly student who was quite enthusiastic about the program. We considered salvage with re-made timeline and goals and additional mentoring support, but in the end despite promises there was no last minute code commit, and we had to judge on what little code we had in hand. All our students who passed midterm also continued on to pass the final. In 2012 former GSoC student and mentor Anne G. smoothly transitioned into the role of lead admin from Wolf B., with Wolf and another long-serving co-admin standing by with advice. Since our umbrella is wide, we brought in an additional co-admin for better communication with mentors and projects that the other admins didn't know as well. Anne is a great communicator and has settled in well. (n.b. that wasn't written by her ;-) OSGeo sent two delegates to the 2012 Mentor Summit, who chaired summit sessions on umbrella org admin'ing, geospatial FOSS, and humanitarian FOSS. We spent a lot of time comparing notes and ideas with other umbrella orgs and participating in Open Science sessions.

OSGeo participated in 2011, with a very good success rate. Many of the students continued to work with their OSGeo projects after the end of summer, and even become official contributors. The mentoring has been overall effective, and the communication among students, mentors and admins has been constant. Still, getting in contact with elusive participants represented the main difficulty, and has been addressed case to case. OSGeo sent 2 delegates to the 2011 Mentor Summit, and benefited of the presence of 2 more, who were already in Mountain View. As in the previous year, the delegates chaired a Geospatial session, and improved connections with many other projects.

OSGeo participated in 2010, and in many ways it was a tough year, but we like to think that we managed to come out victorious. It was challenging because our slot count was cut to about half of what we have had the previous year, while still having the same number, if not more projects participate under our umbrella. We also had some surprising student dropouts (one who is still MIA, as far as we know), maybe the aliens targeted OSGeo, because of our knowledge of the earth? ;) But despite these challenges we managed to put out some great projects and were in general very happy with the year. OSGeo sent 2 delegates to the 2010 Mentor summit who participated in many geospatial sessions and also chaired one session. We made new friends among the FLOSS geo-related projects and re-connected with old friends.

OSGeo also participated in GSoC in 2009. Twelve OSGeo member projects participated and were very successful. The applications were of better quality so we had fewer dropouts than the previous year. We also had further cross-project co-operation projects, which went very well indeed. OSGeo Sent two delegates to the Mentor Summit.

OSGeo participated in GSoC in 2008. Eleven OSGeo member 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.

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. Even after all this time most of the the previously participating mentors and administrators continue to be involved in this year's OSGeo GSoC effort.

Why is your organization applying to participate in Google Summer of Code 2015? What do you hope to gain by participating?

One of the most important goals of OSGeo GSoC is to promote cross cooperation between projects that belong to OSGeo but normally follow autonomous, parallel paths of development. This year we would like to give priority to ideas that involve more than one single project. Like previous years, we also expect to involve more students and new developers in our FOSS projects, and to grow as a community as well as improve everyone's personal development.

How many potential mentors do you have for this year's program? What criteria did you use to select them?

We will require for each proposal at least two mentors, with extensive knowledge of the topic of the student s proposal. Mentors are normally acknowledged active developers and/or educators, mostly from the ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS Labs network of universities and research centres.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?

We will carefully proceed to the selection of students. This year it is our intention to require from eligible students a prior involvement in the project that they wish to participate for, as simple bug fixes or small tasks requested by mentors. This will at least guarantee that the student is able to use the mailing list, can code, and understands the kind of commitment that is requested by GSoC On the other hand, we must be as clear as possible on the definition of the time table before the coding period starts. Students who miss one weekly report are first to be contacted by email by the admin, with mentor in cc, unless the mentor notifies the admin about the delayed report. if there is no response from the student, the mentor and admins try to contact him/her via IM or phone calls. We had in the past very rare cases of students who disappeared completely; usually, after a first inquiry, the students replied and got back to the project.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?

We were less prepared to deal with disappearing mentors than with disappearing students. Usually the admin contacts the mentor and enquires about any issue, and if there is no chance to improve the situation, nominates a replacement mentor. This year we have decided to be more demanding during their selection, and accept only active developers with outstanding reputation. Furthermore, we require at least two mentors for each student, so that one can serve both as a second source advice and as backup, if necessary.

What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before and during the program?

We will help students find a suitable software project, by recommending OSGeo-Live and its rich documentation. We will encourage students to contact mailing lists and IRC channels in order to get feedback directly from developers.

What will you do to encourage your accepted students to stick with the project after Google Summer of Code concludes?

After GSoC, we will encourage the students to continue developing their project, by asking them to already think about extensions and improvements while compiling the proposal. This is meant to help them select which features to implement during GSoC, and already plan forward. We know that for most students the free time will drastically reduce when classes will start in September and October, so we expect a reduction of their commitment. But most of all, we are confident that after getting in touch with our amazing community and having fun developing code with us, they will want to remain and be part of the community themselves!

Are you a new organization who has a Googler or other organization to vouch for you? If so, please list their name(s) here.

N/A

Are you an established or larger organization who would like to vouch for a new organization applying this year? If so, please list their name(s) here.

N/A

Is there anything else we should know or you'd like to tell us that doesn't fit anywhere else on the application?

seriously? we have written thousands of lines already ;-) Say hi to Cat and Stephanie from Anne and Madi! Hope you got back safe from FOSDEM :)

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Google Summer of Code Application 2015

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