• Latest
  • Questionaire
    • Why does your org want to participate in Google Summer of Code?
    • What would your org consider to be a successful GSoC program?
    • How will you keep mentors engaged with their GSoC contributors?
    • How will you help your GSoC contributors stay on schedule to complete their projects?
    • How will you get your contributors involved in your community during GSoC?
    • Is your organization part of any government?
    • Anything else we should know (optional)
  • Program Application
    • Ideas list
    • Mentors
    • Program Retention Survey
      • Number of accepted students / GSoC contributors.
      • Number of those participants that are still active today?
• From previous years
  • How will you keep students involved with your community after GSoC?
  • Has your org been accepted as a mentoring org in Google Summer of Code before?
  • Which years did your org participate in GSoC?
  • How many students did your org accept for 2020?
  • How many of your org's 2020 students have been active in your community in the past 60 days?
  • For each year your organization has participated, provide the counts of successful and total students. (e.g. 2016: 3/4)
  • Is there an organization new to GSoC that you would like to refer to the program for 2020? Feel free to add a few words about why they'd be a good fit.
  • If your org has applied for GSoC before but not been accepted, select the years:
  • If you are a new organization to GSoC, is there a Google employee or previously participating organization who will vouch for you? If so, please enter their name, contact email, and relationship to your organization. (optional)
  • What year was your project started?
  • Where does your source code live? Please provide URLs that point to repositories, GitHub organizations, or a web page that describes how to get your source code.
  • If you are a new organization, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?
  • If you chose "veteran" in the dropdown above, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation. Please also list your pass/fail rate for each year.  (was: Did your organization participate in past GSoCs? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation.)
  • Why does your org want to participate in Google Summer of Code? (Was pre 2016: Why is your organization applying to participate? What do you hope to gain by participating?)
  • How many potential mentors do you have for this year's program? What criteria did you use to select your mentors for this year's program?
  • What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?
  • What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?
  • What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?
  • What will you do to encourage that your accepted students stick with the project after Google Summer of Code concludes?*
  • Are you a new organization who has a Googler or other organization to vouch for you? If so, please list their name(s) here.
  • 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.
  • Is there anything else we should know or you'd like to tell us that doesn't fit anywhere else on the application?
  • What is your success/fail rate per year?
  • Are you part of a foundation/umbrella organization?

Latest

Questionaire

Why does your org want to participate in Google Summer of Code?

Every Summer of Code that we have participated so far to has had an amazing impact on XWiki. It not only helped our project by providing some much needed manpower and enthusiasm during the summer, but also by increasing the number of long-term contributors.

GSoC allows us to propose some fun and useful projects around the XWiki platform which are self-containing and which we can hopefully incorporate into XWiki's development branch. In addition, it's also rewarding to acknowledge that we can help new contributors discover Open Source and professional software development practices.

We had a great time participating in the previous editions, which allowed us to meet great people, both contributors and other mentors. We hope to discover new talented contributors that share the same faith we have in the wiki concept and want to build on top of it.

What would your org consider to be a successful GSoC program?

The best outcome from a GSoC pariticipation for us, regardless of the success/fail of the projects, is unquestionably getting new contributors and, even better, new core committers. At least 3 of our current core committers initially joined as GSoC students/contributors.

The 2nd best thing for us is for a GSoC project to make it into the product or a useful extension. The Solr search integration (our main search implementation) started out as a GSoC project and eventually made it into the standard product.

How will you keep mentors engaged with their GSoC contributors?

Our mentors are key members of the community which also have experience in mentoring contributors (from previous editions).

Even more, we don't encourage a private contributor-mentor relationship. We prefer that GSoC contributors and mentors discuss their projects in the open on our forum and IRC/Matrix channel, and we try to get the contributor to work with the whole community, where the mentor is just the person who knows the most about that project.

How will you help your GSoC contributors stay on schedule to complete their projects?

We plan to screen contributors based on their available time and technical capability to achieve the goal. Our past experience with Summer of Code projects is that contributors must not be overloaded with other work to be able to focus on the Summer of Code project. In our previous projects we had two disappearing contributors who had overestimated their capabilities and available time. We believe we have learned from that and the first thing we check is if the contributor *can* finish their project on time.

To reduce the risk we will ask the contributor to regularly give updates and to discuss about their work on the forum. We will also require that the contributor commits their progress at least once a week. This way they can easily get code reviews and make sure they are going in the right direction.

If we feel the progress is not good, we will discuss with the contributor on how they can adjust their approach and even their targets, but also acknowledge that in some cases failing the contributor may be needed.

How will you get your contributors involved in your community during GSoC?

Our IRC/matrix channel and forum are very active, and at almost any time of the day and night there's a dev available to talk to interested contributors (people in general). The community is very responsive and patient with new people who are in need of some help, or simply curious and willing to learn something new.

During the project, we will ask the contributor to participate in the forum's "dev" category to explain what they are working on and will try to have as much communication as possible done in public so that our community knows what is happening. If the contributor interacts with the core they will be trained by the community to comply with the community rules. We're trying to make the contributors develop code that can be integrated on the spot, and not some sandboxed projects that might one day be used or not.
We believe that this intensive interaction with the community is likely to increase the contributor's motivation to stick with the project.

Is your organization part of any government?

No

Anything else we should know (optional)

Program Application

Ideas list

https://gsoc.xwiki.org/

Mentors

4

Program Retention Survey

The last program your organization participated in was:

2021

We're looking for more details on how many of your students/GSoC contributors from the above program are still active in your community today.

Number of accepted students / GSoC contributors.

2

Number of those participants that are still active today?

0

From previous years

How will you keep students involved with your community after GSoC?

Successful students will be granted committership on the module(s) they have come to master during their GSoC experience. Committership means both power and responsibility, and from our prior experience it strongly motivates students to remain involved. Also, we will make sure that successful GSoC work gets integrated and made available to the community, where both devs and users can express their interest in using and extending it, can provide informed feedback and raise questions. Knowledge that their project is being used and appreciated will boost the student's confidence, and such interactions with an interested community are likely to trigger not only the student's involvement in discussions, but also further contributions in response to the community's feedback. Of course, we will continue to guide the student through all this as needed.

Has your org been accepted as a mentoring org in Google Summer of Code before?

Yes

Which years did your org participate in GSoC?

2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2013
2012
2011
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005

How many students did your org accept for 2020?

3

How many of your org's 2020 students have been active in your community in the past 60 days?

0

For each year your organization has participated, provide the counts of successful and total students. (e.g. 2016: 3/4)

2021: 1/2
2020: 1/3
2019: 3/4
2018: 3/3
2017: 2/4
2016: 0/1
2013: 0/1
2012: 3/3
2011: 3/3
2009: 4/6
2008: 8/10
2007: 5/6
2006: 4/5
2005: 6/7

Is there an organization new to GSoC that you would like to refer to the program for 2020? Feel free to add a few words about why they'd be a good fit.

If your org has applied for GSoC before but not been accepted, select the years:

2015
2014
2010

If you are a new organization to GSoC, is there a Google employee or previously participating organization who will vouch for you? If so, please enter their name, contact email, and relationship to your organization. (optional)

What year was your project started?

2003

Where does your source code live? Please provide URLs that point to repositories, GitHub organizations, or a web page that describes how to get your source code.

http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/SourceRepository

If you are a new organization, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?

N/A

If you chose "veteran" in the dropdown above, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation. Please also list your pass/fail rate for each year.  (was: Did your organization participate in past GSoCs? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation.)

We have been accepted in 8 out of 10 editions of GSoC so far. Every Summer of Code has had an amazing impact on XWiki. We learned from the first year in particular to distinguish greedy students versus passionate students. We also learned how students can overestimate their capacities. We also learned the work we need to do to mentor the students. Year by year we feel that we do a better job at introducing the students to high quality development practices and communication in an Open Source project.

The GSoC projects have created great additions to the XWiki software as well as brought stable contributors to the XWiki projects. Some of the most notable contributions are: a complete makeover of XWiki's UI, standard compliant backend storage for XWiki, a Chart Macro to transform tables to charts, an experimental peer-to-peer library allowing to replicate wikis, Google Docs integration, a better testing framework, and others. One SoC 2007 project even evolved into a fully featured XWiki product, namely the XEclipse offline editor of wiki pages, which was continued along successive GSoC editions in the following years. 2008 was the year with the largest number of projects and successes. It brought 3 permanent contributors, and all the projects that have passed the final evaluation have been successfully integrated: syntax highlighting and code completion for XEclipse, Open Office integration providing import for office documents and a much better copy/paste support in our WYSIWYG editor than what any other editor offers, WebDAV and REST access to the wiki, a better user experience in XWiki Watch, SSO through OpenID. GSoC 2009 was an occasion for fresh ideas, bringing new features to some of our existing projects (XEclipse and XOffice), and laying the foundation for some exciting and rather complex new ones: XOO - an OpenOffice Plugin for editing Wiki pages, OpenSocial integration with XWiki, Wiki Import Module, which started out very promising. In particular, the work done on the OpenSocial integration project was the starting point for XWiki 3.0's new Dashboard. GSoC 2011 branched out towards the Android platform with a comprehensive library which allows Android applications to communicate with a remote XWiki instance, revitalized XEclipse with the "RESTification" project and brought it up to date with XWiki's latest features, and prototyped an auto completion feature which speeds up content editing. GSOC 2012 brought improvements to the Android connector, and laid the grounds for a new mobile-friendly skin based on "Foundation", and a new search engine using Solr (which ended up replacing XWiki's default search engine!).

GSoC 2011 was the our first year with a 100% success ratio, a goal achieved in 2012 as well, but not all our previous GSoC experiences were the same. Even though the students we have chosen showed enthusiasm and willingness, some are not, in the end, capable to produce code that can be integrable in our code base. However, for those students who make efforts to do a good job until the end, event the failure is not a complete failure, as they still earn experience, expand their knowledge and improve their communication skills.

Our pass/fail ratios are:
2005: 6/7
2006: 4/5
2007: 5/6
2008: 8/10
2009: 4/6
2011: 3/3
2012: 3/3
2013: 0/1

Why does your org want to participate in Google Summer of Code? (Was pre 2016: Why is your organization applying to participate? What do you hope to gain by participating?)

Every Summer of Code that we have participated so far has had an amazing impact on XWiki. It not only helped our project by providing some much needed manpower and enthusiasm during the summer, but also by increasing the number of long-term contributors.

GSoC allows us to propose some fun and useful projects around the XWiki platform which are self-containing and which we can hopefully incorporate into XWiki's development branch. In addition, it's also rewarding to acknowledge that we can help students discover Open Source and professional software development practices.

We had a great time participating in the previous editions, which allowed us to meet great people, both students and other mentors. We hope to discover new talented contributors that share the same faith we have in the wiki concept and want to build on top of it.

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

From our community, we have 4 people willing to mentor students this year.

The selection criteria we used were:

• Desire to be a mentor
• Knowledge of the code base and development best practices
• Availability to mentor the students
• General view of the XWiki goals and roadmap
• Mentoring skills and past experience in mentoring people and especially GSoC students
• Tolerant but firm in what they expect

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?

We plan to screen students based on their available time and technical capability to achieve the goal. Our past experience with Summer of Code projects is that students must not be overloaded with other work to be able to focus on the Summer of Code project. In our previous projects we had two disappearing student who had overestimated their capabilities and available time.

To reduce the risk we will ask the student to stay in Instant Messaging contact with his mentor in order to give regular updates, and to regularly discuss their work on the main mailing list. We will also ask the student to quickly show results (code, specifications) to be able to judge his understanding.

If we feel this isn't done we are able to invalidate the student at the mid-term evaluation, or, in extreme cases, even before the end of the bonding period.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?

We expect that this will not happen since our mentor are active people in the community and wouldn't volunteer if they didn't feel they could. In any case, we are able to activate one of our backup mentors. Even more, we don't encourage a private student-mentor relationship. We prefer that students and mentors discuss their projects in the open on our dev mailing list and IRC channel, and we try to get the student to work with the whole community, where the mentor is just the person who knows the most about that project.

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

Outside GSoC we're always maintaining a friendly community on our mailing lists, gently encouraging people to contribute.

Our IRC channel and mailing lists are very active, and at almost any time of the day and night there's a dev available to talk to interested students (people in general). The community is very responsive and patient with new people who are in need of some help, or simply curious and willing to learn something new.

During the project we will ask the student to participate in the developers mailing list to explain what they are working on and will try to have as much communication as possible done in public so that our community knows what is happening. If the student interacts with the core he will be trained by the community to comply with the community rules. We're trying to make the students develop code that can be integrated on the spot, and not some sandboxed projects that might one day be used or not.
We believe that this intensive interaction with the community is likely to increase the student's motivation to stick with the project.

After the project we will, of course, invite the student to continue work in our community if the project was successful.

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

Successful students will be granted committership on the module(s) they have come to master during their GSoC experience. Committership means both power and responsibility, and from our prior experience it strongly motivates students to remain involved. Also, we will make sure that successful GSoC work gets integrated and made available to the community, where both devs and users can express their interest in using and extending it, can provide informed feedback and raise questions. Knowledge that their project is being used and appreciated will boost the student's confidence, and such interactions with an interested community are likely to trigger not only the student's involvement in discussions, but also further contributions in response to the community's feedback. Of course, we will continue to guide the student through all this as needed. Finally, the main company which sponsors the development of XWiki may consider funding the students' subsequent contributions, or even make job offers to graduates.

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?

N/A

What is your success/fail rate per year?

2018: 3/0
2017: 2/2
2016: 0/1
2013: 0/1
2012: 3/0
2011: 3/0
2009: 4/2
2008: 8/2
2007: 5/1
2006: 4/1
2005: 6/1

Are you part of a foundation/umbrella organization?

No