Parrot organization GSOC application (raw)

orgapp.txt

Organization ID parrot

Organization Name Parrot Foundation

Organization Description The Parrot Foundation supports development of the Parrot Virtual Machine (PVM) and an entire ecosystem of related library and compiler projects.

Organization Home Page URL http://parrot.org/

Main Organization License Artistic license 2.0

I Agree to the Admin Agreement True

What is the URL for your Ideas page? https://github.com/parrot/parrot/wiki/Summer-of-Code-Task-Ideas

What is the main IRC channel for your organization? #parrot

What is the main development mailing list for your organization? parrot-dev@lists.parrot.org

Why is your organization applying to participate in Google Summer of Code 2012? What do you hope to gain by participating? The Parrot Foundation has participated in the Summer of Code and the Google Code In programs for several years and have always had very successful and productive experiences. Several of our most active current contributors have originally been GSOC students in years past. Previous summers have brought great ideas, great energy, great enthusiasm and great new code to the Parrot project. We're hoping to continue that trend in 2012.

Did your organization participate in past Google Summer of Codes? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation. Parrot originally participated in GSOC in collaboration with the Perl Foundation in 2008, 2009 and 2010. In 2011 we decided to apply separately and were accepted. Our years collaborating with the Perl Foundation were very fruitful because of the many opportunities to work together and overlap projects. However, we did feel the distinct squeeze of having to share precious slots with a larger organization. Our years as an individual organization have meant more administration overhead but have also brought us more student slots and arguably more diverse and successful projects. Every project that we've had in the past few years has been successful on some level. Some projects succeed in their stated goals directly. Some projects have failed in their original proposed goals but have succeeded in teaching valuable lessons about the current codebase and the needs of users going forward.

If your organization has not previously participated in Google Summer of Code, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)? Our organization has participated in GSOC previously. In 2008, 2009 and 2010 we participated as part of a collaboration with The Perl Foundation. In 2011 we participated as an independent organization.

Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now. https://github.com/parrot/parrot/wiki/Summer-of-Code-Proposal-Template ## Project Summary A summary of what your project is and why it is important ## Project Description A more in-depth discussion of the project including as many technical specifics as may be available. ### Tools and Technologies Used A short listing of tools you plan to use: Build tools, documentation tools, unit testing libraries and tools, source control tools, etc. ### Delivered Results A list of things you plan to deliver as part of a successful project. This should include your working code and several of the following: documentation, sufficient unit tests, code examples and tutorials, and build infrastructure. ## Project Timeline A timeline of basic milestones, broken up by week. Each weekly milestone should include goals for code written, documentation and unit tests developed, and other deliverables. The student should be prepared to demonstrate weekly deliverables at a weekly status meeting with the mentor. ### Allowances The student should provide a short description of what will happen in the event that time is lost and milestones are missed. This should include a prioritized list of features that may be omitted in order to still deliver a working product by the final deadline ### Additional Ideas The student should provide a short list of ideas for additional features and deliverables that may be worked on if the student is ahead of schedule. The student is expected to continue working until the final deadline. If all primary deliverables are completed early, additional work should be ready to work on to fill remaining time. ## Student Information The student should provide a short biographical description mentioning prior coding experience and education, and a short discussion about why the student is both qualified and capable to complete the proposed project in the time alotted.

What criteria did you use to select your mentors for this year's program? Please be as specific as possible. Organization mentors are all volunteers from our team of developers. We expect all mentors to have familiarity with our code, if not specific expertise. We also expect mentors to have good knowledge of the systems being developed by the students, and to have plenty of free time over the summer months to be actively involved in the project. Specifically, we would expect any mentor to have been active in the project for at least 1 year, to have a commit bit to our primary repository, and to have been a contributor of high-quality release-ready code.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students? Students disappearing during the summer is always a difficult problem to deal with. We would expect all students to give us two avenues of communication, such as an email address and chat handle. Students are also expected to check in with mentors for at least a weekly one-on-one meeting, to attend our weekly design meetings, and be present in our IRC chatroom regularly. Students are also expected to write public blog posts about their progress weekly. Success in the project depends on being present and active. Students who miss multple meetings with mentors, who do not make regular code commits and who do not post regular blog updates may be failed. When a student is in danger of missing these obligations we will attempt to get in contact with them using as many forms of communication as we have available. Obviously where students alert us about prior obligations before-hand (family vacations, etc), these actions are not required.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors? Every student project will have an assigned primary mentor. In addition, we will have a small group of backup mentors who will attempt to stay familiar with several of the projects. When the primary mentor disappears one of the several backup mentors will be promoted to the position for the duration of the summer.

What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program? Proposals will not be accepted from students who have not interacted with our development team prior to the proposal deadline. All prospective students are expected to be involved in the community and possibly have earned a commit bit to one or more code repositories. As a requirement for a passing grade, all students are expected to attend our weekly design meetings, to write a weekly status report blog post for inclusion in our aggregator, and be present as often as possible in our IRC chatroom. Students who do not meet these requirements may be failed at the discretion of the mentor. Students are encouraged to take pride in their contributions, and look for ways to improve and expand them in the future.

Are you a new organization who has a Googler or other organization to vouch for you? If so, please list their name(s) here. N/A

Are you an established or larger organization who would like to vouch for a new organization applying this year? If so, please list their name(s) here. N/A