The second Google Summer of Code is starting to accept applications from May 1st.

Unfortunately, last year I missed the application deadline, but I'm intending to participate in the coding this year.

The Perl Foundation is already on the mentoring organizations' list, so I know they are counting on applicants, but searching on the monastery didn't turn up any significant discussion about either last year's or this year's contest. Let's change that. ;)

2005's results didn't put TPF to shame, but maybe this year can be even better by more discussion about the subject. There has been a list of ideas put together for 2005 and I think|hope it will be updated soon to reflect already completed|changed and new ideas. If someone "in charge" is looking at this post, one of the things which I'd personally appreciate is more Perl coding ideas compared to C coding for perl|parrot (although please don't make me hurt for this suggestion ;))

So, I'd like to ask the monks, if you have an idea or suggestion which could be implemented, but hasn't been due to lack of time or for some other solvable constraint, please come forward and if it is within my capabilities (or maybe someone else will feel motivated to try SoC?) I'll try to take it on if I find it interesting and/or worthwhile.

I have a few ideas already for my application, like my interest in internationalization (Lingua modules/framework, particularly hungarian ones as it's my mother language) and testing (some ideas from the TPF page), but SoC is not about me, I hope this post can generate some attention to it and new ideas and applicants can emerge.

On the tangent a bit, allow me to talk about motivation. I consider motivation and reasons an important factor when dealing with open source, so I'd like to talk about my reasons of why I'd like to participate. I would not be honest if I would say that the $4500 is not motivating me at all (and the $500 for TPF). No, it does. I'm a university student after all who has to think about living. But the important thing for me is that I think about the funds as allowing me to do what I _like_ and allowing me to contribute something for others to use. That is kind of the dream situation of mine to do what I like while not having to worry about basic necessities or I can even get payed for doing what I like. If there will be an idea that catches my imagination I'm going to work on it anyway whether my application to SoC gets accepted or not.

Thank you for listening, it is time for me to step down from my soapbox. :)

Update: added a missing word

Update 2: It seems my application to SoC has been accepted. Yay!

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Google Summer of Code 2006
by jonadab (Parson) on Apr 15, 2006 at 13:31 UTC

    I suppose my use AnyGUI proposal is too substantial a project for one person to tackle in a summer. Then again, GUIs are IMO Perl's number one weakness, and something like that could go a long way toward shoring up said weakness. Even if it only supported the "big four" GUIs (Win32, GTK, Qt, and Aqua), and even if it did not support all possible features right away, it would still be terribly useful, especially if it provided a nice API.


    Sanity? Oh, yeah, I've got all kinds of sanity. In fact, I've developed whole new kinds of sanity. Why, I've got so much sanity it's driving me crazy.
      GUIs are IMO Perl's number one weakness,

      In what way? I think they are it's strength. I can whip up Perl GUI code faster in Perl, than anything else. There already is Tk, Gtk2, and WxWidgets which are cross platform. Most programmers don't like the very-high level uber-languages because they hide too much behind the scenes.

      I suppose I have to agree, that it would be nice to make installing the toolkits a bit easier. Tk is a breeze, but Gtk2 can be a hassle on linux, and a real PITA on Win32.

      What I would like to see is a java-like web browser plugin for Perl, so we can extend the GUI's into cgi.


      I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. flash japh
Re: Google Summer of Code 2006
by gellyfish (Monsignor) on May 04, 2006 at 09:38 UTC

    TPF is now accepting applications and there have already been a few. The information for any budding applicants is linked from use.perl

    /J\