What is GSoC
Google Summer of Code is a program sponsored by Google to introduce students to open source programming. Students work on the projects mentored by different open source organizations for 3 months. It is an incredible opportunity to learn the various tools and practices used in real world softwares.
Selection
I got selected as a Google Summer of Code student in SPDX (Software Product Data Exchange). The results came out on May 6 11:30 PM IST.
How I get into GSoC
Starting early is the first priority. The announcement was made on January where application period for the organisations is started. It was my first time in GSoC and I am completely new to the open source community and have a few experience with Python. So my main motive was to go through all previous year selected organisations which uses python in there projects. So I made a list of all organisations except the ones with the huge reputation such as VLC, mozilla etc.
Next task is to search for the projects which fits to my level of understanding. There is a huge possiblity that organisations selected last year may also appear this year. This took me approx 2-3 weeks.
Next, the list of organisations came out who are participating this year. I go through my list and filter out those who are selected and made a new list. Next is find out 4-5 organisations which I like. Going through their projects and filtering those which are not in my league so that I can propose my ideas.
As already mentioned I don’t have much experience I was not able to select any of the projects according to my level. My friend was contributing to SPDX, he suggested me some of their projects and I started understanding there code.
I end up with SPDX specifications in PDF and HTML. It looks interesting to me and I introduced myself on their mailing list with my queries about the project. They took some time to reply but they acknowledged my mail. Then I started working on the proposal to present. My friends played a major role in this. They inpired me so much. One of them already completed GSoC last year so under his guidance I was making my proposal. We are a group of 5-6 people among 4 of them are applying this year, so it also ecouraged me to work hard for it. Finnaly I submitted my proposal for the review and one of the people from the org reviews it so that I can make final changes before submitting and then I returned to focus on studies because semester exams are near.
About my project
The aim of my project is to preapre a PDF and HTML version of the specifications which are currently in markdown format. My task is to integrate it with pandoc which is best for conversion along with the language conversion feature to spport multiple languages.
You can find it on github here.