Google Summer of Code Meetups, Episode 1: Colombo, Sri Lanka

As the student application period rapidly approaches for Google Summer of Code 2013, past students, mentors, and organization administrators are organizing meetups around the globe to talk with university students interested in participating in this year’s program. Over the next couple of months we will feature posts written by some of these meetup organizers in a special blog series.

Colombo, Sri Lanka meetup: held March 4, 2013
We held our first Google Summer of Code meetup at Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (Colombo, Sri Lanka) on the 4th of March 2013. The event was organized with a great deal of support from the Department of Computing. Approximately 150 young enthusiasts took part in the event.  

The first speaker was Keshan Sodimana, who is the Manager of Google Developer Group, Sri Lanka. Keshan delivered an excellent presentation on the value of open source software for the world. He explained how the world is heavily dependent on open source infrastructure from the Linux kernel on supercomputers to the Android mobile operating system on millions of phones around the world. 

Next, I took to the stage to present the students with an overview of the Google Summer of Code program. I also focused on general open source fundamentals from communication within open source communities to proper email/IRC etiquette and open source culture. 

The final speaker was Suranga Nath Kasthurirathne, a mentor and past Google Summer of Code student for OpenMRS. Suranga discussed general information about Google Summer of Code such as important dates for the program, how to apply, guidelines on how to write project proposals, and how students can develop the most suitable project based on their interests. 

The meetup concluded with a session on related technologies, including an OpenMRS demonstration and other related tools such as the Student Manual and which would help students prepare for Google Summer of Code 2013. The students were very excited about the program and asked many questions both publicly and individually after the session ended. We tried to clear up doubts they had about their own abilities and encouraged them to participate. 

We pointed out the benefits of working on real-life projects, as opposed to the mock projects that they work on in university. We also explained the value of building connections all around the world, and the happiness working on open source projects brings in general. Those of us who had participated as students in previous Google Summer of Code programs shared our experiences on why it was important to continue with a project after Google Summer of Code was over and what benefits it could bring to them. 

Good luck to all the hopefuls applying for Google Summer of Code this year!  

By Harsha Siriwardena, former Google Summer of Code student for OpenMRS 2012, Google Code-in mentor for the Fedora Project 2012 and Organizer of Google Developer Group Sri Lanka

Stay tuned as we feature more Google Summer of Code meetups over the next 2 months leading up to the student application period, April 22nd-May 3rd.

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Team

Linking students together for a summer

Metalink improves downloads automatically using mirrors, hashes, and digital signatures. In 2012, Metalink participated for the first time in Google Summer of Code. We had four students (with a fifth via the GNU Project). All five students successfully completed their work, adding not only to our codebase, but also to our community. We learned a great deal from our students and hope we were able to teach them as well. Below is a brief description of the 5 students and their respective projects.

aria2 Web UI and Metalink/HTTP support in DownThemAll!  by Hamza Zia 
aria2 is a wonderful command line BitTorrent and Metalink client, but the terminal isn't always the best option for everyone and having a Web UI available makes it more accessible to more people. Additional features were also added to the Firefox Addon download manager DownThemAll! this summer. Hamza says, “Before Google Summer of Code I was an amateur web programmer, I had never written or worked with codebases beyond a couple of hundred lines of code. This all changed after the Google Summer of Code program, where with the help of my mentors I was able to approach a large project in manageable chunks and work with some of the very high profile Firefox Addons (DownThemAll!). At the same time I was able to create my own open source project (a web UI for aria2).”

Metalink Downloader Chrome extension by Sundaram Ananthanarayanan 
We didn't want Chrome users to be left out, so Sundaram created this extension from scratch.

Metalink/HTTP support in KGet by Aish Raj Dahal 
Aish added Metalink features to KGet, the native download manager for KDE. Aish says, "Getting to work on an Internet Standard that spans across platforms, download managers, and browsers has helped me gain an insight into the workings of open standards and implementations of RFCs. The small yet excellent community around Metalink has taught me several aspects of real world open source development for which I shall always be thankful."

wget Metalink support by İlim Uğur 
İlim added Metalink support to this ubiquitous command line downloader. This was done with the support of the GNU Project.

Apache Traffic Server cache hits for download mirrors via Metalink by Jack Bates 
The same exact file downloaded from different mirrors isn't automatically detected as already present in proxy caches. Jack had a busy summer, doing double duty online with Google Summer of Code via GPRS modem and sometimes by candlelight, while also volunteering at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village for orphans in Rwanda for a year. Jack says, "This project aims to address the number of times the same large files are transferred over the same internet connection, because large files are often distributed from many different mirrors or a content distribution network. This is sometimes called duplicate transfer detection and is especially helpful where a lot of people share one small, congested internet connection, like at the rural village in Rwanda where I was a volunteer."

Thanks to our students, mentors, all other contributors and supporters, and the Google Open Source Programs Office people who arrange such cool things. The Mentor Summit was tremendous and we are thankful for the whole Google Summer of Code experience.

By Ant Bryan, Metalink Organization Administrator

Dare to try: a story of summer triumph

Guest post by Anna Senarclens de Grancy, former Google Summer of Code student and recent mentor for Systers 

Check out this inspirational story from a previous Google Summer of Code student (for 2 years) who went on to become a two time Google Summer of Code mentor in the program. If other students are unsure of whether they have what it takes to get involved in the program, read on and consider applying to Google Summer of Code 2013.

This is my story of how I did what anybody could have done but not everybody would. I dared to try something new and found out that with a little bit of guts, some luck, and support from people at Systers I can do almost anything. 

My mum realized I’d likely become an engineer when at the age of two I was managing  multiple remote controls better than most adults. Later on I confirmed her beliefs by attending a technical upper secondary school followed by a technical university. After some time in college I had to pick what field of engineering to pursue. I took an introductory course programming in Ada with a friend who told me there was no way I could do CS. I took this quite hard because, even though I wasn’t very good at it, programming had been a lot of fun. As a result, I decided to pick mechanical engineering instead of CS which means that I’m not a computer scientist. Then a friendly computer geek passionate about open source software introduced me to this whole new world. 

Newly inspired I realized I wanted to give CS a second chance, this time as a hobby. I got some books on Python and began learning on my own in the evenings and during weekends. Learning from a book is all fine but there is only so much one can do before one wants a challenge and to try something out for real. Someone suggested I check out Google Summer of Code, and when I did, I found Systers. I was fascinated by their mission and  since they were offering a project in Python for beginners, I gave it a try. I had never really done any real programming before, nor did I have any experience with databases or distributed revision control. My Python knowledge was mainly from books and I hadn’t taken many computer science classes in college. I had a lot to learn, but you can hardly imagine how much fun I had doing it! I dared myself to try and ended up having the summer of my life. Sure there were hard times trying to understand the code, what to do, and how to do it. In my ignorance I changed, moved, and removed enough things on my computer to have to reinstall Ubuntu three times and Mailman probably five or six times. I had sleepless nights sitting in front of the computer coding, and when I slept I dreamt of bugs. I added what seemed like a million debug statements and often got nonsense back (at that time I didn’t know how to use a debugger). 

Once I solved my first bug and got the taste of success and the feeling of I might actually be able to do this, I was hooked. So much fun! Such great feedback from Systers, they were always friendly, patient, and willing to help answer my questions. It’s such an ego boost when you solve that one problem you’ve been working on for days or even weeks. I dared to try something new and ended up learning a lot and having a great time while doing so. I lived the dream and also got to know amazing people along the way. The only thing it took was making that first step. 

Have you ever considered how easy it might be to fix a bug in your favorite open source software program? I encourage each of you to give it a try! 

By Anna Senarclens de Grancy, Google Summer of Code former student and mentor

As this story illustrates, you don’t have to be a CS major or have 10 years of coding experience to be a part of Google Summer of Code, you just need to have a desire to learn and to push yourself. The participating mentoring organizations will be announced on April 8th, students then have two weeks to discuss application ideas with the organizations. On April 22nd, student applications open for Google Summer of Code 2013.