Earlier this year we discussed whether Evergreen should apply to be an organization in the Google Summer of Code. The Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects
, and as such it is a popular program for both open source projects and for students. We decided to put in the effort to apply (an ideas page, a developer’s quick-start virtual image, a killer application by Galen), and we were rewarded: Evergreen was one of just 175 projects accepted into this year’s program.
Several months of effort later, we are now almost ready to begin the actual Summer of Code! Google allotted Evergreen (as a first-year GSoC project) a total of two student slots after almost thirty project proposals had been submitted by students, and making the final selection was not an easy task. However, we’re delighted to announce the two student proposals that will be funded by GSoC this year, each of which addresses a traditional pain point for new adopters of Evergreen:
- Ben Webb – Packaging, LiveCDs, and virtual machines
- Joseph Lewis – Bring sanity to the Evergreen configuration interface (it’s getting crazier all the time! – ed.)
Expect to see and hear a lot more from Ben and Joseph on IRC and the mailing lists in the next few months; while we had a number of excellent technical proposals vying for the available project slots, one of the qualities that these students shared was excellent communication skills.
We also hope to continue hearing from the many students that we connected with during the proposal process but to whom we were unfortunately unable to allocate a project slot. It was heartening to see the genuine interest in our project from, and to exchange thoughts with, so many bright, capable developers. We encourage you to keep working with us, if you have the time; your insight and fresh eyes on the project are invaluable, and we hope that we can still offer you real software development experience.