One of the biggest problems of most open source software organizations is the lack of manpower a.k.a. developers. Great project ideas can just fade away or never materialize because of that.
To help with this, each year, Google organizes an event for attracting students to work on open source software projects, during the (northern hemisphere) summer vacations. This is called the Google Summer of Code, or simply GSoC. The main goal is to introduce new young programmers to those communities, so that they become long time contributors.
It’s really awesome that Google uses its tremendous influence and resources to promote something like this (even paying for the summer work !). As much as this is great, I honestly still wonder why they do this. Maybe Google indirectly benefits from the stronger open source ecossystem (as the company itself hosts numerous open projects). Maybe they’re just so damn nice.
As an computer programming and open source entusiast myself, for years, I followed many GSoC editions, excited about the new developments. After postponing it for a long time due to lack of confidence in my abilities (after all, I’m a engineer, not a computer scientist), I realized that my time as a student was running out and took a chance to participate this year (oh, the unstoppable force of despair…).
Looking for an organization to get in touch with, I noticed Scilab Enterprises, host of Scilab software, a tool I started using years ago as a result of my search for a free and open alternative to the expensive and ubiquitous Matlab package.
After exchanging some messages with one of the Scilab developers (Clément David), we found out that my technical knowledge would be fit for one of their projects, and then I submitted a proposal to GSoC.
Last friday, day of the chosen students announcement, I received the call of duty:
Hi leonardojc,
Welcome to GSoC 2016!
Your proposal Native Scilab Kernel for Jupyter has been accepted!
We look forward to seeing the great things you will accomplish this summer with Scilab Enterprises.
[…]
So now I’m in. No turning back.
I’m really grateful that Scilab developers are trusting me on this one (there was a considerable number of candidates this year). So I’m really motivated to retribute the confidence and the great tool they provided over the years, by learning a lot and giving my contribution back to the community.
More on my project later. See ya.