FreeOrion

Have you all thought about applying as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code? Another open-source game I am involved with has done this the last couple of years, with a large amount of success.

Yes: viewtopic.php?p=29900#p29900

We submitted an application, but weren't accepted. Based on some GSoC discussions I read at the time, part of the reason might have been that our list of tasks wasn't formatted appropriately. We're also a fairly small project, compared to some of the types of projects that have been accepted historically. And likely most significantly, there was already another 4X space empires game that had been in GSoC the year previous, and which was accepted again that year. It's not surprising that they'd only accept one such project, and go with the one they already had history working with.

I would be up for helping to draft a new submission to GSoC.

The last application was for 2008/2009 (right?) and FO is still alive and doing well (v0.4!) couldn't hurt to resubmit for 2012.

FreeOrion candidacy reasons:

• Established community of senior level developers, artists, game designers, modelers, QA-ers
• Passionate community - see Forums
• Long-standing project - since 2003
• Wiki-based documentation of project (not necessarily of code-base, but even THAT could be a project)
• Open-source
• Current developed code-base (http://cia.vc/stats/project/FreeOrion/)
• List of Achievable Programming Work (http://www.freeorion.org/index.php/Programming_Work)
• Revisioned code-base from SourceForge
• Important lessons for any coder - revisioned source-code, development languages, patterns, structures, libraries, documentation, team-coding, etc.
• Bugs! (what better way to learn for us coders?) - http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_i ... tid=544942
• Feature Requests! - http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_i ... tid=544945

If it's a formatting issue, an afternoon of creating a wiki page for GSoC participants, and organizing a project to their formatting specification is possible. I would like to help, if a time can be set aside to do it with a knowledgeable contributor. Possibly even a Discussion Thread on the Forums for GSoC projects.

Just seems like a reachable goal to get a professional-student developer. Again, I'd be up for helping acting on this.

At the time, my impression was that although they didn't publish or indicate that there was a particular format they wanted, in practice they expected a fairly specific set of details and way of organizing those details in the potential tasks list, which we didn't match. The discussion I looked at wasn't specifically addressing FO's programming work page, but another project that seemed to have similar problems.

For FO to participate this year, we'd need tzlaine to be willing to commit to supervising the student. Convincing his is probably the first thing to worry about.

Based on the thread, "supervision" seemed to be about assisting in the student's setup, reviewing their progress, evaluating their performance, and being their main point of contact with them and Google. Or more accurately, everything here: http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/docu ... entor_role

It depends if tzlaine is interested in personally supervising, the pro's to FO include a dedicated coder to help accomplish projects over a summer that might take all year; FO's profile raises a bit being in GSoC, possibly other pro's.

The personal pro for him might be a coding assistant on tzlaine's personal FO development. Also, a $500 stipend is included to be allocated however FO chooses, if that could supplement some of his time in supervising.