Why Diversity is Important in Open Source: Google's Sponsorship of OSSEU

The Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference is taking place in Lyon, France, which the Google Open Source Programs Office is sponsoring. The Linux Foundation supports shared technology through open source, while the conference provides a space for developers and technologists in open source to meet, network, and share knowledge with one another in order to advance the community. Why is this of utmost importance to Google OSS? Google has been rooted in the open source community for many years, supporting programs, projects, and organizations to help advance open source software and technology—we understand the necessity of sustaining open source and the developer community in order to advance technology as a whole.

Sponsoring OSSEU is more than just providing funds, but really pushing the diversity initiative in open source. We need diversity across all levels in open source whether it’s contributors, maintainers, doc writers, or anyone supporting the project. As said recently by the Open Source Initiative, “Many perspectives makes better software.” Having previously funded diversity initiatives such as scholarships or lunches at OSS conferences, Google continues to support this cause by sponsoring the diversity lunch at OSSEU.

In particular, sessions and events that Google will be hosting while at OSSEU include a keynote on Documentation by Megan Byrd-Sanicki and the Women in Open Source Lunch, both on Tuesday, October 29, 2019. The keynote on Docs highlights the importance of doc stars and why their contributions are essential to the growth of the open source community. Our support of the women in open source lunch is especially important as we look to increase the diversity of the open source community, through supporting women and non-binary persons to get more involved and have the opportunity to connect with each other at an event of this scale.

If you’re attending OSSEU, stop by the keynote, and we hope to see you at the lunch as well. If you aren’t attending this year, and are interested in getting more involved in the open source community, the summits hosted by the Linux Foundation are one of the best ways to learn more about OSS and meet passionate people involved in different OSS projects and organizations.

By Radha Jhatakia, Google OSPO

Google Summer of Code: Being Happy While Working is Possible

GSoC Experience Series

I am proud to have been part of GSoC 2019, which was without a doubt, a motivating experience that gives strength to continue improving and working in open source. I participated with the project: New rules for the Topology Framework in gvSIG Desktop, and received mentoring by the OSGeo organization and gvSIG association. Being a part of this project has been one of the best experiences I have had—from a professional point of view and because the freedom the mentors gave me to work and the interaction with the community, allowed me to enjoy the environment while learning simultaneously. Achieving the objectives was a challenge but thanks to the motivation and support it was possible.

With the project it was possible to implement a new set of topology rules for the validation and correction of vector data sets, which improve and extend the characteristics of previously existing tools in gvSIG. These tools allow browsing, searching and correcting validation errors. With the rules implementation are automated tasks, allowing to reduce errors and eliminating repetitive tasks. For more information, you can read the final report or the repository with all the documentation of the project documentation is available in English, Spanish and Italian.

What I love about this project is working on time optimization—perhaps the most precious and scarce resource—The user is allowed to focus on logic to be solved, leaving aside repetitive tasks and optimizing the use of time.

Defining rule implementation: “Must be Coincident with”


Rule “Must be Coincident with” working to find the topological errors.

Beyond the technical contribution, what gave me the most value is the spirit of the program that allows you to work professionally, and through a motivating context really allows you to enjoy the process and this enhances the results. It was essential that as the project progressed the mentors were transparent and allowed me to work with more freedom; their trust and the community interaction was of great importance.

It has been a great experience and I appreciate the opportunity to participate in a project with these characteristics, which also helps optimize the use of time. I encourage anyone who is interested in adding value in any area of open source to participate in GSoC, don’t hesitate due to your age.

By Mauro Carlevaro

It Really is a Great Learning Experience

GSoC Experience Series

Nearly a month ago the official results for Google Summer of Code 2019 were announced, and I am happy to say I successfully completed the program with OpenStreetMap working on the 3D renderer OSM2World.

Before even applying, when I was searching for information on it most of the resources I was able to find included the same phrase: "It is a great learning experience!"

Being the almost-graduate Computer Science student I was, I had the inaccurate impression of thinking I knew enough skills and doubted what it could really offer me—in terms of expanding knowledge, as I had decided on a (Java) project I would apply to (a language I already knew).

Long story short, here is what "it is a great learning experience" translated into for me when it came to programming practices:

• Always think about cases besides the "happy path": CS students/learners may agree with me here: Practice-projects do not always require making the application tolerant towards wrong input one can provide. That is not the case for a large scale application, though, as one unpredicted NullPointer exception derived from one tiny part of the input file (in my case) can have a user scratching their head for hours or not find the root of the problem, which in many cases is not where the error log indicates; in addition to their work not being done due to the unexpected crash. Which leads me to the 2nd point that I learned the hard way.
• Make unit testing an integral part of coding routine: Yes, this, as well as other points listed here, might seem obvious to most but until recently, it was not to me. And being known as one of the less interesting tasks to perform when coding definitely doesn't help unit tests place high on programmer's "favorite things to do" lists. However, tests can most of the time detect unintended "features" other than just wrong method output, like the unexpected crashes mentioned above. So it is pretty much always better to create them soon after writing your new method rather than waiting before the end of a deadline.
• Add elements of Functional Programming to object-oriented thinking, with the most important elements to me being those of immutable types and side-effect free methods (i.e. methods that do not modify variable values outside their local environment). I only understood the importance of that myself when I was suddenly able to make use of such methods I wrote for previous tasks, for the latest ones. And that was due to the fact that I was instructed to write them that way, without knowing beforehand they would come in handy again.

This list could probably have a few more points added, it was a 3-month long program after all, but for me those are the ones that definitely deserve their spot here. And of course the above would not have been possible without my mentor's... mentoring! Instructing someone on what to do and allow them to discover the benefits of the advice on their own, in addition to providing any necessary explanations, is definitely a way to help someone adopt practices for a lifetime! It is safe to say that the whole GSoC experience would have been different, should things have been different.

For anyone that might be interested, here is the application document I submitted as well as the final project!

By Jason Manoloudis, OpenStreetMap GSoC Student