Summer of Code 2009

Geeklog was accepted to take part in the Google Summer of Code™ 2009. This page provides an overview of the 2009 activities.

What is it?

The Google Summer of Code™ is a program sponsored by Google where they pay students to develop open source software. Google have been running this program every year since 2005. After 2007 and 2008, Geeklog has been accepted as a mentoring organization again in 2009.

The following projects were accepted for the Google Summer of Code 2009 (also see the announcement on geeklog.net):

For Geeklog

• Test framework, Student: Sean Clark (Mentor: Dirk Haun)
• Plugin repository, Student: Tim Patrick (Mentor: Matt West)
• Support for PostgreSQL, Student: Stan Palatnik (Mentor: Vincent Furia)
• OpenID 2.0 Support, Student: Thomas "Choplair" Gutleben (Mentor: Randy Kolenko)
• Webservices revisited, Student: Phaneendra Kaddi (Mentor: Ramnath Iyer)

For AptitudeCMS

• Taxonomy and Tagging Plugin, Student: Kittipat Virochsiri (Mentor: Tony Bibbs)
• Geeklog2 Syndication API, Student: Barry Carlyon (Mentor: Justin Carlson)

Other Project Ideas

This is a list of ideas for projects that we feel would add useful functionality to Geeklog but didn't make the cut for GSoC 2009:

For Geeklog

• SWOT (Spam: Web of Trust)
• Spam-X plugin overhaul
• Core Notification Service
• Add Social Networking Features
• Cross Site Alerting and Publication API

We're also willing to accept new ideas from students. In that case, please check that what you're proposing isn't already available (e.g. with some existing add-on). For more inspiration, you can also refer to our list of leftover ideas (not all of them fully fleshed out) from previous years.

For AptitudeCMS

• Workflow Plugin
• Geeklog2 Anti-Spam "Solution"
• Media Plugin
• Facebook Friend Connect Implementation

Notes for Students

We have collected some information for students here. Please take a moment to read them. Thanks.

Recommended reading

Google provides an extensive FAQ. There's also a very informative Advice for Students page. We recommend reading those first.

Required skills

Students interested in any of the above projects should have reasonable experience with PHP and some basic SQL knowledge. Being able to set up your own LAMP server (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) would probably help but isn't a prerequisite.

Geeklog uses Mercurial for revision control (aka version control aka source code management). Students should have a basic grasp of revision control - we can help you with the specifics of Using Mercurial.

Background information

Geeklog is an umbrella for two related but distinct CMS:

• Geeklog (current version: 1.5.2) is the software you may have seen running websites such as Groklaw.
• AptitudeCMS (formerly Geeklog 2) is a "next generation" CMS and has been rewritten from the ground up. There are no released versions of AptitudeCMS yet.

Contact

For all questions regarding Geeklog and the Summer of Code, you can email us at

contact-us(AT)lists.geeklog.net

or use this web form. This is a private mailing list, read only by the GSoC mentors.

If you don't mind discussing things in public, you are also invited to join our Development Mailing List and say "Hi!"

Or you can hop on our IRC channels: #geeklog and #aptitudecms at irc.freenode.net and talk to us directly (some patience required - not everyone may be online there all the time).

For your (draft) proposal, please also have a look at our application template.

Further Reading

• Getting Started with Geeklog development
• About AptitudeCMS - introduction to AptitudeCMS
• The Summer of Code topic on geeklog.net provides coverage of our previous participation in the Google Summer of Code.