GSoC 2012 application
Octave's application for GSoC 2012.
Describe your organization
GNU Octave produces a free numerical computing environment largely compatible with Matlab. It is an old project, started in 1992 by John W. Eaton and used by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide as a free alternative to Matlab.
Why is your organization applying to participate in Google Summer of Code 2012? What do you hope to gain by participating?
Octave participated with one student under the auspices of the GNU project. Due to the success of that experience, where many members of the Octave community helped mentor Daniel Kraft, we want to try again.
Did your organization participate in past Google Summer of Codes? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation.
Yes, during 2012, under the GNU umbrella. The success was a completed project by a very capable student, and the challenges were that Jordi, the mentor for Daniel Kraft, did not know all the answers. Other members of the Octave community were involved in the work in the mailing list and offered advice and help as needed.
If your organization has not previously participated in Google Summer of Code, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?
This is the first time we apply as an independent organisation.
What Open Source Initiative approved license(s) does your project use?
We prefer the GPLv3+ and may use the AGPLv3+ for one side project. We can accept any GPL-compatible free license.
What is the URL for your Ideas page?
What is the main development mailing list for your organization?
maintainers@octave.org
What is the main IRC channel for your organization?
- octave in Freenode
Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now.
Who will be your backup organization administrator?
Uhhh... let me ask.
What criteria did you use to select your mentors for this year's program? Please be as specific as possible.
Their involvement
What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?
Make reasonable attempts to contact them first, of course. If enough time has passed without response (say, one week without a response), begin to analyse the code they have submitted, if any, and attempt to integrate it into our source tree.
What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?
Distribute the workload amongst the remaining mentors. The mailing list is active enough and questions seldom go unanswered.
What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?
Invite them to IRC. Set clear expectations on the mininum frequency of emails (probably one every two or three days). Be nice and friendly to them.
Are you a new organization who has a Googler or other organization to vouch for you? If so, please list their name(s) here.
Yes, GNU can vouch for us.
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.
No.