kartik: (pic#454304)
[personal profile] kartik
For the last few days I was busy with the scratch installation of dreamwidth on fedora. But now when its done so it feels great  to me. I have been there on #dw and the community helped me whenever i needed it. I must say the community is really helpful and supportive. It provides you with the perfect ambience in which you can work and give the best in you. Now I am applying for Production Monitoring which comes under System Administration as my Gsoc project. I am choosing this project as system administration is something which admires me a lot. I feel that this is the backbone for any running website or system. Apart from that I have also cleared Red Hat Certification Engineer Certification Examination in November 2009, and so I am comfortable enough to deal with servers and configuring them. I want to apply my existing knowledge as well as eager and learning new stuffs like cacti and nagios which are the standard industry environment and are used by dreamwidth. As for now that I don't have much idea about them so my approach is to prepare some basic shell scripts and implementing them on cacti.

Now I am writing my proposal for Gsoc and will post that soon( as now only 2 days are left :P). I have some small doubt what are the things that I need to cover in the project abstact section. Does that include my working strategy and the overall schedule, actually i am a bit confused that to what extend do i need to mention in this section and to include what else. I am looking forward for the community review so that I shall include those features too. Your suggestions are always welcomed. :)

mayank: (Default)
[personal profile] mayank
Hi,

I am Mayank from India. I am a second year student of M.Sc.(Hons.) Mathematics.

I would like to take up the project of a Desktop Client for Dreamwidth. I have posted my complete proposal at http://mayank.dreamwidth.org/855.html.

A sample client which I wrote to start learning the protocol is posted at http://mayank.dreamwidth.org/580.html.
[personal profile] mircea
Hello,

     I am Mircea and I want to build a desktop client.You are probably asking: "why another post about a desktop client?" ... well, because I think that my proposal is different from those before mine. Many proposals means that community will benefit from a better product. I will describe the features I thought about leaving the most technical details for the eventual application.I have added 3 mockups for the app: MainView , EditView and MiniView .
     First thing first: I will develop the application in Actionscript 3 with Flex framework for Adobe AIR Runtime. AIR is a free cross-platform runtime for Flash, HTML and Javascript. It brings the web experince to the desktop enjoying the latter access to resources. Use of a runtime has the advantage that you write the same code for Win, Linux or Mac. Another advantage of Adobe AIR is the auto-update system for its apps.
     First thing I will focus on is user management. Each user will have one or more "identities", this means one Dreamwidth username and optional Facebook and Twitter accounts. Each "identity" will be assign to a tab (as you can see in MainView). There will be a "user info" one (left side in MainView.png) where the user will found: userpic , website ,location , birthday ,status on Twitter and Facebook, other contact info , bio ,interests. This items will be editable.The user will be able to change his userpics.In Facebook zone you will see your current status, inbox, requests and will have a link to your online page.In Twitter zone you will see your status and last tweets. There will be two modes to use the app: online mode and offline with sync. In online mode any action (change on profile , post entry, etc.) will be performed immediatelly , while in sync mode will be added to a queue and all the action will be performed at sync time (when the app will go in online mode). In online mode you will be able to select posts and messages that will be available offline. To make them available will be saved as files on harddisk.
     The second thing I will focus on is enhanced editing. There will be a separation between reading and editing. The main page is dedicated to reading posts and messages. The reading section will have a search (like that on the website).Any editing will be made in a separate window , one for every edit action. You can have as many edit windows as you want. The mockup for it is EditView. Every draft can be saved separately on a file (probably with a xml structure). You could load any previous draft, modify and then save it again or send it. The formatting options will resemble with those available on website.All drafts and saved posts/messages will form the "archive". Its content could be seen on reading section. Before posting something you can see a preview of how it will look on reading section.
     Third thing I have focused on is efficient use of resources. The app can run in "mini-mode"
(mockup is MiniView) without main window or any edit windows. There the user will see the last posts, messages or tweets (summarized , not the all content). The small sized window is cpu-friendly. To add functionality in "mini-mode" will be a command line like interface. Using this interface the user will be able to open main window , open a edit window or save one message/post to "archive". For example a command like: "new post -as Mircea -to dw_dev" will open an edit window with "Post as" and "Post to" input texts completed with "Mircea" and "dw_dev", and "post" selected in type of edit selector. This command line like interface will be found on main page too (as it can be seen on mockup :D). When new stuff appears in "Latest things" zone a customizable sound will be played.
     Another feature will be a theme editor where the user will modify text fonts , background colors or images. I want to use an agile like development method meaning that I will work in sprints (2-3 weeks). After each sprint there will be an usable app ready to get feedback from the mentor and community.
     This is a looong post ... the reason is that I wanted to describe ,as well as I could, my vision about how the desktop client should look like and how should it work.This is only a draft of my proposal so I am eager to hear your opinions about it. Thank you for reading.
toonsuperlove: (Default)
[personal profile] toonsuperlove
Hello, everyone

Sorry for my invisible so long~~~

In this time I have got a lot thing to do with ( final exam, take flight , laptop broke) and also

I and my team have pass in Imagine Cup 2010: in Embedded Development to round 2 !

So, this 2 job (Imagine Cup + GSoC) will take me this whole summer~~

but dont worry, I can manage it !

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oops! I almost forgot an important thing

I have finish (almost) final GSoC proposal and I have list my feature in my blog you can go and see here!

toonsuperlove.dreamwidth.org

If anybody has a doubt or want some more, dont wait ! you can throw to me ! (and I will dodge)

Thanks



jportela: (Default)
[personal profile] jportela

Here's the Project Description section of my proposal. You are very welcome to share your thoughts on this:

Project Description: Improving the Poll System


The goal of this project is to improve the Poll System, a paid-user enhancement in Dreamwidth. The improvements should focus on the User Controls/Experience, by doing a usability study and requirements specification for new features, and then implement the fixes/features needed. Some issues are already discussed in Bugzilla, and should be implemented in the early stages of GSOC, while doing the usability study and requirements specification.

 

The usability study should be a simple study, made with the help of the community. I will try to get some friends/relatives of mine to do some tasks on the Poll system (with no previous knowledge how it works) and have them tell what they are thinking and observe what they are trying to do. Maybe we can get the community to do this, by delivering some guide scripts and have them record the conversation.

 

The requirement specification of new features should be an informal specification of features existing poll users want to have. Some of them are already documented in Bugzilla, but if the project advances, then I think we can ask people for more features and help to document them.

 

So, during the whole GSOC I should be solving issues as they appear in the Bugzilla Polls section.

 

In parallel, a usability study and requirement specification of new features should be done to "enrich" the Bugzilla. This issues can be solved on parallel during GSOC, or may be documented for reference to solve post GSOC. 

 

Some issues that are already documented that are good candidates for me to solve since day 1:

 

 

  • Bug 791 - Polls have poor semantic styling (and are ugly)
  • Bug 28 - Download CSV of poll results
  • Bug 1694 - More control for polls
  • Bug 1756 - "Tick N boxes" poll question option
  • Bug 1590 - AJAXify polls
  • Bug 1397 - Add option to collapse poll display
  • Bug 1106 - Ajaxify poll creator
  • Bug 703 - English strip /tools/fck_poll.bml
  • Bug 1861 - Poll answer redirection in the same style
  • Bug 2191 - Manage Polls page

 

 
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark
Hey everybody!

We wanted to let everyone know how things are progressing with the Google Summer of Code program and our participation thereof. So far, I've been emailed (and responded to) a good 60+ students and have another half dozen emails in my inbox that need replies, so there's been a lot of interest. We're really happy to see that!

We also have received 19 official applications so far and there are still a few days left in the process. It's fairly typical that 80% of students don't apply until the last day or two, so we expect this number to go up a lot in the next few days.

Now for the bad news: Dreamwidth is only going to be accepting approximately six students to work with us this summer (although this could be fewer, depends on Google). The main factor limiting us from accepting more students is the number of mentors we have available. Hopefully next year, if this year goes well, some of you will be ready to mentor!

What does this mean for you?

You have some competition! You really want to make sure your application is outstanding. Tell us what you want to do, tell us why you want to do it, then tell us more. Why do you care about the project? Social media? Dreamwidth? Show us that you understand what we're doing here, that you care about diversity, about culture, about the project you're interested in.

We're looking for people who are passionate. People who are not applying because they just want a summer job, but because they want to be part of a community, of a project, learn what it's like to be on a team that values your participation and contributions.

Something else you might consider, too, is applying for other projects as well. For example, the Selenium project is looking for people to work on mobile support for their framework on Android, iPhone, and other platforms -- and since so many of you are interested in mobile platforms, this might be particularly interesting. You can see their ideas list to see what else they're looking for.

There are many other projects out there that are looking for people to help out. Google allows you to submit up to 20 applications as a student (I believe), so keep in mind your options. We're honored and flattered by how many of you want to work with us, and we will accept as many of you as we can (and Google allows), but there is a lot of competition right now.

As always, if you have particular questions, you can either comment to this post or email us (summerofcode@dreamwidth.org). We'll try to get back to you as quickly as possible so you can get your application in before the deadline in a few days.
jportela: (Default)
[personal profile] jportela
Hi everyone,

I'll be applying this year for GSOC, and I chose Dreamwidth to spend the summer doing great things :)

Here's my draft: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dhh82zgj_37g9s8c8ff

I used a Google Doc because I think a lot will be changed until the April 9 deadline

I heavily used the application template you provided, so I think I will add a description about my technical background and about what I intend to do with the project (milestones, deliverables, all of these are estimates of course).

Also, I may do a About Me post tomorrow on my journal, so you are welcome to follow it ;)

Any feedback of any form would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Joao Portela
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise
Welcome to everyone who's come here via Google Summer of Code! You've already met [staff profile] mark, who's our primary contact for GSoC; I'm [staff profile] denise, the other site owner and the general business-type person. I am so not the person to go to for technical help or mentoring, but I wanted to post anyway, because I've been noticing a common thread to a lot of the applications (and questions about applications) that we've been getting.

Many of you who've talked to us so far have described your project purely in technical terms: what technologies you want to use, what your technical skills are, what experience you have, etc. These are all important -- we absolutely want to know what kind of project you want to work on, in as much detail as possible. Tell us everything you want to do, how you want to do it, and what you've done before that's like it. Tell us how you think your project will work.

If you've thought about what it should look like, draw us a sketch. (It doesn't have to be a good one; I once gave Mark a sketch I'd done that consisted of nothing but boxes with things scribbled in them. Just show us what you think it might look like.) If you haven't thought about what it should look like, think about what it should do, and tell us that.

Tell us the parts you think are going to be easy. Tell us the parts you think are going to be hard, or the parts that you know you don't know enough about yet. (It's okay if you don't know everything about what you're going to do and how you're going to do it. We like seeing people who are confident enough to say "I don't know this part, and that's what I'm hoping to learn from you.") Tell us anything and everything you can think of about your project. (Don't worry about your application being too long. We want as much detail as you want to give us.)

But don't just tell us what. We also want to know why.

We want to know why you picked this project for your application -- what gets you excited about it. We want to know why you want to dedicate your summer to working on this project, and not a different one on our list. We want to know why you picked Dreamwidth to work on, and not another open-source project.

Dreamwidth is a very unusual open source project, because Dreamwidth is about people and about passion. If you look at the Latest Things page, you'll see some of our users. These are the people who use the software we're writing, and to them, Dreamwidth is their home. They love Dreamwidth passionately, because our Diversity Statement and our Guiding Principles exist to give them a place where they can feel safe, welcome, accepted, and comfortable sharing their lives. We aren't just here to write code. We're here to build them a place to live. Most of our developers have had at least one moment where they've had to stop and think to themselves, "Oh, my God, people are using things that I made to talk to each other and it's changing their lives."

And we get excited about that. We get really excited about that. One of the things I'm most proud of is that about half of the people who write code for us have never programmed before, or haven't programmed in a long time, or have never programmed in Perl before. They got so excited about Dreamwidth that they wanted to learn how to program just so they could help build the site for everybody. Now, we know you won't be as excited about Dreamwidth yet -- you just got here! But we want to know what does get you excited.

A lot of the mentoring organizations are looking for applications that read like a job interview: your resume and your skills. We're looking for something more than that. We want to read your application and feel like we know you: why you care about what you do, why you love programming, and what excites you about the idea you're proposing.

Don't think of us like a job interviewer! Think of us like your programmer friend, and when you explain your idea to us, tell us why you think it's awesome. Maybe the answer is "because I'm fascinated by system administration and want to learn more about how to write good tools", or "because I love browsing on my mobile phone and I get really excited whenever I see a site that has a good mobile interface", or "because I love statistics and graphs and seeing how I can play with them", or "because my sister uses a screenreader and I want to learn about how to make sites work for her". Maybe it's just "I love writing code, and I really like your project culture".

But whatever it is, tell us about it. Tell us a lot about it. We want to be able to read your application and feel your passion for what you're proposing. We want to be able to tell why you care.

(Edited to add: [personal profile] damned_colonial has written a post about "Follow Friday" for GSoC students! Check it out, find something -- or somebody -- you find interesting, and take a look around.)
anthonynonso: (Default)
[personal profile] anthonynonso
Server systems are a key part of software development, and it's great to potentially be part of a project in this area of information technology that is of great importance, and also, interest to me.

It will be interesting to see what the exact specifications and requirements are, with respect to the implementation of new tools. Are we looking at integrating new tools to the existing setup? Or possibly developing plugins for existing tools?

I am somewhat familiar with the server monitoring tool, Zabbix (and would highly recommend it, if new tools are being considered). It's free and Open Source too!

An important feature that would be necessary for a new tool is the ability to view and monitor HTTP requests (especially to a server load balancing mechanism, if it applies in this case). Learnt about this in school this semester. I am not sure whether a tool like Zabbix has this feature, but I could be wrong.
[personal profile] roshansingh
Hi all,
I am planning to apply for this project. I have used wordpress and blogger (gdata) api to create a desktop blogging client GScribble (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gscribble), so I have the knowledge to make a cross posting facility. As right now, I dont know perl, I wanted to know if I can implement this in Python, if not I can learn perl as well :-).

So I can implement external integration with Blogger and Wordpress easily. I will have to learn Typepad api.

Does dreamwidth have import/export functionalities for the above blogging services. If not this could be useful, for people to join dreamwidth/migrate to other services.

Regards
Roshan Kunmar Singh
http://roshansingh.wordpress.com
mrigeshpokhrel: (Default)
[personal profile] mrigeshpokhrel
 hi,

I am Mrigesh, a Information Technology student from IIIT-Allahabad India  and would like to work on the project developing desktop client for Dreamwidth.

Since past one or two weeks i have been studying the protocols which have been forked from LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com/doc/server/ljp.csp.protocol.html)and(http://hg.dwscoalition.org/dw-free/file/tip/cgi-bin/ljprotocol.pl) and the existing client for livejournal "logjam" . I have gained some understanding of the code and the client/server protocol reference specified above.

I would like to start with a bottom-up approach for the gui client, centring it along the linux OS specifically Ubuntu, using QT. I would start off with creating a client in following manner :

 
  1. Creating a bare minimum client:
    1. The client would request the user for authentication(username and password)
    2. The client would allow the user to "read" past entries and "post" a new entry after successful authentication.
    3. The methods used would be (Flat client/server protocol : http://www.livejournal.com/doc/server/ljp.csp.flat.protocol.html)
      1. login : logging into the client after successful authentication
      2. sessiongenerate : generating a session after successful login
      3. postevent : posting a blog/journal only if the login and sessiongenerate are both successful.
      4. sessionexpire : close the session instance the user has created thus.
  2. Client with functionalities like reading and editing past posts, check friend list/groups and edit friend list/groups
    1. The client would perform bare minimum functions as defined above
    2. The user would be able to view his past posts and edit them.
    3. The client would have a side pane/scrollbox where he would be able to view and edit his existing friends and groups
    4. The new methods implemented would be :
      1. login : logging into the client after successful authentication.
      2. sessiongenerate : generating a session after successful login.
      3. postevent : posting a blog/journal only if the login and sessiongenerate are both successful.
      4. getevents : coupled with "syncitems" this would allow the user to view his past posts, events, to-do items.
      5. editevent : this would allow the user to edit/delete past posts in his journal.
      6. getfriends : this would fetch the list of users the current logged in user identifies as friends and displays them in the side pane/scrollbox.
      7. getfriendgroups : fetch the user defined groups of friends.
      8. editfriends : add/edit/delete existing friends.
      9. editfriendgroups : edit user defined friend group list.
  3. This would be supposedly the final client(that what i planned till now anyways) with proxy support(i dont know how to do that but i am still reading a blog about it) and most of the required functionalities provided in the protocol.

I would be following the ABC rule of software development, i am recently messing with twitter api (using curl) and have been successful till date while posting a tweet and a mention/reply. I would to integrate twitter functionalities as well , but that seems a bit far-fetched. I would also be honoured to work with/on dreamwidth even after GSOC2010 as i find it could help me learn a lot of new things!!

Any sort of suggestions or critic comments are most welcome, after-all it would only help me in improving my proposal :) .

Thank You
Regards
Mrigesh Pokhrel
irc : _silentAssassin
gtalk : mrigeshpokhrel
skype : mrigeshpokhrel
(PS: i am in india and so i would be available anytime after 12:00 GMT ( thats when my class gets over))


 

 

arjunjain: (Default)
[personal profile] arjunjain

Hi
My name is Arjun Jain .I am a computer engineering student from India .I want to discuss more about the idea of rich text editor overhaul.
recently i have design the lug website of my college when i design the admin the part i want to use text editor which provide me lot of featured
some one suggest me to use TinyMCE when i integrate it with module then page take long time to load then i replace  TinyMCE to CKeditor then i was surprised i take 30-40 % less time as compared to TinyMCE.
the main aim of all these conversation because i want to be sure that in this project i am only replacing the existing text editor with new fully featured text editor (CKeditor) . Is that right.
 Currently dreamwidth does not support to store any media . the current version text editor only show video link on the post and does not provide functionality  of upload from system to server . i want to know can i remove the same functionality because dreamwidth not supported ,to newer version of text editor or provide the some method to activate this functionality in future if media hosting project of dreamwidth became successfull .
  I would appreciate to discuss and listen any idea from all of you

thanks


panna: (Default)
[personal profile] panna
Hello!

I'll very shortly introduce myself here, just not to be out of the blue :P :
I'm Ania, a Computer Science student from Gdynia, Poland who would like to participate in this year's Google Summer of Code (GSOC). 

And - yes!- the point:
I'd be pleased to create a tool that would be useful for DreamWidth Members: a calendar - on-line time organizer. ( http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/Summer_of_code#Calendar_Functionality )

I would do as much as I can to create a practical, intuitive and configurable tool that could meet Your expectations, therefore I'd be very thankful for any requests, suggestions, advice.
 
Below I attach an outline of the calendar functionality. It bases on the requirements from Dreamwidth GSOC ideas page and the research I conducted among my family and friends about the functionality that they look for in this kind of utilities or they think this tools lack of: 
 
 
I TECHNICAL FEATURES
 
1. Synchronization handling (proposition below is a open list of possible options): 
a. iCalendar format (RFC2445) - used e.g. in Google calendar
b. CSV format
 
2. Exporting calendar to printable format
 
 
II USER FEATURES
 
 3. Multiple calendars
- Calendars may share information with each other
 
4. Events
a. Relating events to categories
  b. Support for recurring events
- Choice of recur period
c. Possibility to set a note
d. Possibility to assign file, etc
e. Possibility to assign to persons, groups...
 
5. Group events
a. Group events - possibility to create events shown in group members calendars
b. Event invitations
 
6. Notifications (highlighting on calendar, pop-ups, email)
a. Reminder of incoming events
b. Reminding of past - not done events
 
7. Reconfigurability and personalization
a. User's ability to control calendar's visibility (public, private, among group)
b. Calendar features personalization
c. Configurable time zone
d. Configurable calendars days (e.g. Mon-Fri), hours, …
e. Configurable design
 
8. Design
a. Skin personalization
b. Coloring events depending on it's category, priority
c. Highlighting events that are of a high priority, are already delayed, etc...
d. Pinning images in the background of an event/day/… view
 
9. Searching
a. Pick a data/month/year and search through the portal for specified by User data, events
b. Displaying history concerning specific category, person meet, etc
 
10. Others
a. Todo notes -> events to place in time in the future
b. Events -> todo notes  -possibility to "unschedule" an event
 
 
III WORTH CONSIDERATION
 
11. Interesting fields to look at
a. Weather calendar
- Displaying background views for e.g. future week weather
- Retrieving data from web service
 
b. Sms notification about important events
- Possible only for particular phone operators
 
c. Integration with MS Outlook



Once again - I'd be very thankful for any comment, suggestion or criticism and for your attitude to this subject. I'm looking very forward to this.

Thanks!
[personal profile] abhishek0
Hello all,

I am a student aspiring for GSOC 2010. With my interest in developing a Desktop Client for DreamWidth I would love to have some feedback from the mentors. My job is develop the app but the basic structure of the app is yet not firmly laid. It would be nice to know what kind of GUI will fit DreamWidth. How many frames are required, the functionalities of the back end of the GUI, the implementation language(JAVA is good but QT is also as good; I would love to go for QT). With this discussion, the depth of the project shall become clear. I hope the mentors shall respond back with the answer.

Thank You.
toonsuperlove: (Default)
[personal profile] toonsuperlove
Hello, Everyone

My name is Sruit Angkavanitsuk, Thailand. (Is it hard? you can call me Toon as well) I am in last semester on MSc.Computer Science at Christ University, Bangalore, India. I have read through your GSoC 2010 idea and I am interest in making Desktop Client Project.

I have both worked (as a part-time / freelance) and studied since I was in junior high school; I have got the opportunity to work with a specialized team that involved with software develop and project management. By this experience I plan to make Desktop Client Project base on java language (due to the fact that you need to support on every OS) and also, I have most comfortable with Java language.

My skills that might helpfulto this project:
- Java knowledge (7 years experience)
- Networking knowledge : TCP, UDP, SIP, XMPP, SMTP
- Web technology: AJAX, CSS, DOM, JavaScript, XML

Feature & Functionality
My plan for this app it will be like a diary book. has theme, emo, icon and some decoration if have time
- post entries to their journal
- * read their "reading page"
- account settings
- some small features:
  • tray icon
  • news / update / mail popup (from tray icon)
  • themes
  • emotion icon

My expect plan result:
Midterm result
- Complete plan & design (in class + architect) overall project
- Complete (or almost) in interact with server
- Middle way in make functionality
- Basic Sample GUI (just for show result)

Final result
- Complete all functionality
- Complete GUI
- If have time left, wait for any extra function and bug-fixing

* however I still struck when thinking how to make it support for all things like css and javascript (it sure take a lot time) so I thought, It maybe a little simple and plain for the first result (like something that I can't cover it will just ignore that script or style)

I am very interested in this project and I would appreciate to discuss and listen any ideas from all of you

also, I'm newbie here so please guide me well : )

Thanks!

mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark
We've been getting a lot of interest from people who are applying to Google's Summer of Code. Welcome! It's good to see new people poking around and looking at what we are doing here. Briefly, I want to share some information and links that will make things a little easier for you to get started with Dreamwidth as a possible mentoring organization for your summer.


Getting More Information


If you have any questions, you are welcome to comment to this post (look for a link that says Reply or Leave a Comment). One of our community will get back to you as soon as we can, and hopefully the shared knowledge can help everybody out.

If you have any questions that you don't want to be public, you can email [staff profile] denise and myself at summerofcode at-sign dreamwidth period org.


What First?


Since you're looking at this post, you've already done the very first step of contacting us and getting referred to here. Great! Your very first step, after that, if you haven't done it already, is to get a Dreamwidth account. It's a very easy thing to do -- if you send us an email at the above address, or comment to this post, we'll give you a URL you can use to create an account.

Once you've gotten your account created, your first step should be to explore what exactly you can do with your account. Look around the site!

* Customize your profile
* Write a post in your journal about what you're working on, what you've done
* [site community profile] dw_dev: Join this community
* [site community profile] dw_dev_training: Join this community
* See the latest posts on Dreamwidth
* Search the site for content you are interested in

Those are some great first steps. Get a feel for what the site does, how it works. You will not have to know how to do everything, but familiarity with the site is going to be very helpful to working on any projects with us.


Next Steps


With a little familiarity of what the site can do and how people use it, you should probably understand a bit more about our culture and the things we believe in. Dreamwidth is a site that is working hard to promote a healthy, diverse community. It is more important to us that we have a strong, vibrant community than we have the latest and greatest code. At the end of the day it's the people that matter, and we believe that.

First read our Guiding Principles to get an idea of what [staff profile] denise and I founded the site on. Then, read our Diversity Statement -- hands down the most important thing to read and understand if you're going to work on Dreamwidth as a project.

We believe in respect for people. No matter where you come from or who you are, we will do our best to respect you and give you the ability to contribute to this community and be a part of things. That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and we expect the same from anybody who is going to participate in the community -- whether they come in on their own or through the Google Summer of Code program.

If you firmly believe in the meritocracy and think it's acceptable behavior to call someone stupid and belittle their efforts, you might have some difficulty here. Those are not acceptable in our community. We spend our time encouraging and building people up, not tearing them down.

If you have any questions, or you don't feel you understand this, please let us know. You can email me personally at mark at-sign dreamwidth period org if you want, too. I'm happy to discuss this as it's an important issue.


Going Deeper


Okay, now that you've looked around the site, created your account, had some time to play with it, and thought about the meaning behind our Diversity Statement, it's actually time to get down and look at the code and start thinking about preparing your application to work with us this summer.

Your first step should be to get a Dreamhack account -- this is our development environment. It provides you with the ability to tinker with your own version of Dreamwidth without having to actually install it on your own machine. While you certainly can install it yourself, and doing so is actually a very useful experience for learning how things work, it's not something we expect people to do.

Request a Dreamhack.

Once the application is sent in, it will take a day or two for [personal profile] sophie to process it and get your access sorted. After you have access to the system, you should read through the Dreamhack Getting Started page for some tips and advice on what to do with it now that it's setup.

You should also look at our Programming Guidelines which talk about issues of style and how to write code for us.

Once you've gotten to this point you can start writing code! Don't worry if you have many questions, most people do. We'll cover that... about now!


Oh my, help!


It's going to seem a little overwhelming -- but learning how to contribute to a project you're new to, especially one so complex as a website such as ours, is going to take some time and effort. We're here to help you through the process, and we're really excited to see more people interested in helping out on Dreamwidth.

Your best bet for getting questions answered is to use [site community profile] dw_dev. You can either write a new post to this community (on the Update page, you can select to post to here instead of to your own journal) or you can comment to this post (look for a Reply or Leave a Comment link).

If you want real-time assistance, you can try joining us in #dreamwidth on irc.freenode.net. Keep in mind that we're still in the process of moving to Freenode, so things are a little slow until we have everybody over there. If you don't get an answer to your question, just wait a bit. We'll get to it!


Summer of Code Application Tips


If the above didn't really give you a good feel for the kind of things we're looking for, let me try to clear that up. Dreamwidth is a complex project with a lot of opportunities to code really interesting and challenging things. We have a lot of opportunities here for some really great coding and we will be looking for proposals that seem to have a good grasp of what they're trying to do and have the coding skills to pull it off.

That's not all we're looking for, however. Dreamwidth is a fairly unique project in the world of open source because of our strong stance on diversity and respect and how we run our culture. We're going to be prioritizing applicants that understand this and are similarly interested in what we're doing here.

So, in short, to maximize the odds you get accepted to work on Dreamwidth: write a good proposal (detailed, understand what you want to do), make sure you have explored the site, understand our Diversity Statement, and make sure this is all apparent on your application. It also wouldn't hurt to get involved in the community and show that you are interested. We've already had a few people coming by IRC and participating -- hanging out, talking, getting a Dreamhack setup, etc.

If you have any questions, let us know! Thanks for your interest in Dreamwidth. :)
jens: (Default)
[personal profile] jens
Hi,
first of all I want to introduce myself... My name is Jens Lukas from Germany, I am a 4th year student of Software Engineering at the University of Applied Science Fontys Venlo (in the Netherlands) and I currently write my bachelor thesis. Since my bachelor thesis is about developing mobile apps (iPhone, Android and Blackberry) connected to a web service, I already got some experience in iPhone development.

It would be amazing to contribute to the dreamwidth project by developing an iPhone application adding the possibility to use dreamwidth in a comfortable way on a mobile device.

I took a first look at the ljprotocol to get an impression of the functionality / data provided. As a result I want to give you a initial list of the features I think of implementing.

- Post entries / Add comments
- Read "Reading page"
- Read inbox and send messages
- Manage profile
- Push notifications for new entries on your reading page or new messages in your inbox

These are just some basic features I plan to integrate, but I gonna add more information within my proposal (also containing project plan etc.). I just want to get some feedback on my suggestions. Do you miss a feature? Is there something you think is not necessary?

So, I am looking forward to work together with the community and hope that you provide me with some wishes you got regarding the project and of course please pepper me with questions :)

Best regards,
Jens
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise
We have been accepted as a mentoring org for Google Summer of Code!

They haven't decided how many students we get yet, but we may need extra mentors. Would anyone else be interested? It'd be a time commitment, but we'd get minions students out of it :)
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise
Auuugh, neither Mark nor I realized the deadline for GSOC was so close! (It's the 12th of March. Whups.)

We need ideas for things we would want someone to do -- largeish projects with lots of shiny that can be implemented fairly independently without a steep learning curve on the code. Mark's going to brainstorm his own list, but if anybody has any ideas, sound off!
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise
Mark and I have talked it over and decided not to participate in Google Summer of Code this year, since we don't have a long-term established track record of development. (Next year, though, totally.)

I do, however, want to reiterate something I've said to a bunch of people privately: If your school offers externships/independent studies/etc for course credit, and they will allow you to do work with an open source project, both Mark and I are more than happy to let you do so. I will cheerfully fill out whatever paperwork, evaluations, etc necessary to allow you to get credit for your DW work.

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