Difference between revisions of "Summer of Code 2010"

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Scratchfile for our [http://code.google.com/soc/ Google Summer of Code] application.
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(I took over this page to use for Summer of Code status, ideas, etc.)
  
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== Project Ideas ==
  
=1. Describe your organization.=
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This is a list of ideas for projects that have been suggested by our staff and community. Some of these are more appropriate than others, specifically the ones that are very tied in to how the site runs might be more difficult for people who are not already a part of our community.
  
Dreamwidth Studios is an Open Source social network and content management system forked from the LiveJournal codebase run by livejournal.com. Our project wiki includes the Operating Agreement for Dreamwidth Studios, LLC at http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/Operating_Agreement. We are a Maryland-based Limited Liability Company.
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=== Photo/Media Hosting ===
  
Dreamwidth Studios, LLC is founded on a commitment to openness: our motto is "Open Source, Open Expression, Open Operations", and we believe that it is our duty to produce not only a product that people will want to use in a hosted fashion, but also a robust, easy-to-install, easy-to-configure content management system that others will want to install and use locally. Our Guiding Principles can be found at http://www.dreamwidth.org/legal/principles.bml.
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This project would involve adding photo hosting service to our site functionality.  The interesting parts of this project are in the scalability problems of storing and serving up millions of photos, plus learning how to do all of those tricks like pulling out EXIF data, rotating, resizing, etc.
  
While Dreamwidth Studios, LLC is a young company, both of the Members of Dreamwidth Studios, LLC, as well as many of the active development team, have years of experience working on LiveJournal and in social networking at large. Our staff page can be seen at http://www.dreamwidth.org/site/staff.bml.
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If you've a passion for digital media and want to learn about making scalable web sites, this might be a really good project.
  
Our reasons for forking were both technical and social. We believe that over the years, as both the LiveJournal codebase and livejournal.com have changed corporate ownership, the project's commitment to its Open Source roots has waned, and design has been focused too much on the hosted product and not on the Open Souce package.
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=== Clients ===
  
We believe that the LiveJournal codebase has significant advantages over any other blogging, content management, or social networking platform. We also believe that many of those advantages were never fully realized over the years, or were implemented in a non-free fashion. We have built our process and procedures from the ground up to nurture our Open Source development community, and we believe that the way to get fabulous project contributors is to teach them and nurture them ourselves.
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Desktop or mobile applications that connect to the web site and allow you to write posts or do other actions that normally you need the site to do. One of our most requested features is for the ability to use the site without having to access it via a web browser.
  
=2. Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2009? What do you hope to gain by participating?=
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This is a fairly broad category.  It would be a valid project to do a mobile client (iPhone, Android, etc), or similarly, one for the desktop (Mac, Windows, Linux).
  
We all learned how to be effective Open Source project contributors by trial and error over the years, thanks to mentoring efforts from others on various projects we've participated in. By participating in Google Summer of Code as an organization, we hope to pay it forward to the Open Source community by teaching the students assigned to us effective project management and time management techniques, good coding discipline, and most importantly, the unwritten social contracts that most Open Source projects operate under.
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=== OAuth/OpenID/Open Social/etc ===
  
As we've grown over the past year since project founding, we've already built an informal mentorship organization within our project. Today, over half of our active code contributors are people who have not only never worked on an Open Source project before, but who have learned to code through our project. We believe that we are well-placed to use that experience, as part of the Google Summer of Code project, to extend that mentorship organization to help nurture the next generation of Open Source contributors.
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The Internet is a big place. There are a lot of opportunities to implement things that will allow us to connect with other sites out there.  Facebook Connect, Google's Open Social, various sites that support OAuth and OpenID, etc.
  
As part of our corporate commitment to diversity and inclusiveness, we are particularly interested in mentoring non-traditional or minority students.
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We have some ideas on what we'd like to see, but we'd love to hear yours.
  
=3. Did your organization participate in past GSoCs? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation.=
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=== Calendar System ===
  
We have not participated in the Google Summer of Code previously as a company; however, our chief mentor participated in 2005 on a previous project.
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The site would really benefit from the ability for people to schedule events. There are some unique constraints to a calendaring system on Dreamwidth, notably around the security options we provide our users. We'd want to build a system that supported iCal formats at least and could work with various calendaring solutions (online and mobile devices).
 
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[more answer]
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=4. If your organization has not previously participated in GSoC, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?=
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We have not previously applied to Google Summer of Code as an organization.
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=5. What license(s) does your project use?=
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We release our code under both the Artistic License and the GPL.
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=6. What is the URL for your ideas page?=
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[answer]
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=7. What is the main development mailing list or forum for your organization?=
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Our mailing lists are at:
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http://lists.dwscoalition.org/mailman/listinfo
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Our project wiki is at:
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http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/
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Our bug tracker is at:
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http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/
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=8. What is the main IRC channel for your organization?=
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Our main IRC channel is #dw on irc.dwscoalition.org.
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=9. Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now.=
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[answer]
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=10. Who will be your backup organization administrator? Please include Google Account information.=
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[answer]
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=11. Who will your mentors be? Please include Google Account information.=
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[answer]
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=12. What criteria did you use to select these individuals as mentors? Please be as specific as possible.=
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[answer]
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=13. What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?=
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[answer]
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=14. What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?=
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[answer]
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=15. What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?=
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[answer]
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=16. What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes?=
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[answer]
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Revision as of 01:33, 12 March 2010

(I took over this page to use for Summer of Code status, ideas, etc.)

Project Ideas

This is a list of ideas for projects that have been suggested by our staff and community. Some of these are more appropriate than others, specifically the ones that are very tied in to how the site runs might be more difficult for people who are not already a part of our community.

Photo/Media Hosting

This project would involve adding photo hosting service to our site functionality. The interesting parts of this project are in the scalability problems of storing and serving up millions of photos, plus learning how to do all of those tricks like pulling out EXIF data, rotating, resizing, etc.

If you've a passion for digital media and want to learn about making scalable web sites, this might be a really good project.

Clients

Desktop or mobile applications that connect to the web site and allow you to write posts or do other actions that normally you need the site to do. One of our most requested features is for the ability to use the site without having to access it via a web browser.

This is a fairly broad category. It would be a valid project to do a mobile client (iPhone, Android, etc), or similarly, one for the desktop (Mac, Windows, Linux).

OAuth/OpenID/Open Social/etc

The Internet is a big place. There are a lot of opportunities to implement things that will allow us to connect with other sites out there. Facebook Connect, Google's Open Social, various sites that support OAuth and OpenID, etc.

We have some ideas on what we'd like to see, but we'd love to hear yours.

Calendar System

The site would really benefit from the ability for people to schedule events. There are some unique constraints to a calendaring system on Dreamwidth, notably around the security options we provide our users. We'd want to build a system that supported iCal formats at least and could work with various calendaring solutions (online and mobile devices).