Hi,
to speed up our software development for this year I have planned to participate at this years Google Sommer of Code, short GSoC.
In short GSoC means that Goolge is paying students to work on open source projects.
GSoC is a mentoring program for student open source developers funded by Google. Mentoring organisations (such as Wikimedia Foundation or openZIM) can apply with specific tasks they want to be done by some developer. If approved these tasks will be advertised by Google, so students can apply for them to take over a job. The mentoring organisations are then obliged to help the student to get the job done and to review the quality and performance. Depending on the reviews Google is paying up to 5.500 USD to the student.
http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2010/faqs
I have prepared two ideas to apply for GSoC this year: http://openzim.org/Google_Sommer_of_Code_2010
The application timeframe is very short - only from March 8th to 12th. So we need to sort this out quick and remember that I will also need some time to prepare all the papers.
The most important decisions to make are: * which ideas we want to apply with * who will do the mentoring
The mentoring is especially important. Only if the mentor is available and competent a student will be able to do his task and get the money (and we get the code / our idea implemented).
From a technical point of view I think that Tommi has to be the mentor. Maybe also Mirko can enabled to do this task, but also then Tommi must be available for technical questions.
Please answer quickly, otherwise the deadline is over and we loose this great opportunity for progress.
/Manuel