GSoC

Google Summer of Code 2012

Welcome to the Google Summer of Code 2012 page of the coreboot project.

The coreboot project also hosts payload and flashrom projects.

Deadlines

DEADLINE FOR STUDENT APPLICATIONS: Students who are interested in working on a coreboot-related GSoC project must apply between March 26, 2012 and April 6, 2012! If you want to apply, please get in contact with us right away, not just when you send your application!

Make sure you check the official GSoC 2012 timeline.

Why work for coreboot

Why would you like to work for coreboot?

• coreboot offers you the opportunity to work with modern technology "right on the iron".
• Your application will be available to users worldwide and promoted along with all other coreboot projects.
• We are a very passionate team - so you will interact directly with the project initiators and project leaders.
• We have a large, helpful community. Over 100 experts in hardware and firmware lurk on our mailing list, many of them waiting to help you.

Some Caveats

• Google Summer-of-Code is a a full (day-) time job. This means we expect roughly 30-40 hours per week on your project, during the three months of coding. Obviously we have flexibility, but if your schedule (exams, courses) does not give you this amount of spare time, then maybe you should not apply.
• Getting paid by Google requires that you meet certain milestones. First, you must be in good standing with the community before the official start of the program. We suggest you post some design emails to the mailing list, and get feedback on them, both before applying, and during the "community bonding period" between acceptance and official start. Also, you must have made progress and committed significant code before the mid-term point.
• We require accepted students to have a blog, where you will write about your project on a regular basis. This is so that the community at large can be involved and help you. SoC is not a private contract between your mentor and you. http://blogs.coreboot.org/

Note that "regular basis" in the last item does _not_ mean "3 days before evaluation deadlines". You should be "around" all the time (reporting your feedback, sending in partial successes, discussing problems in IRC). We don't expect our students to be experts in our problem domain, but we don't want you to fail because some basic misunderstanding was in your way of completing the task.

Student requirements

We will only accept your proposal if you have demonstrated that you can work with our codebase. For that, you have to send a patch to the list which is acceptable. Just ask for simple tasks on the mailing list or on IRC.

Contact

If you are interested in becoming a GSoC student, please contact the coreboot mailing list or visit our IRC channel on irc.freenode.net: #coreboot

If you need to contact someone directly, Marc Jones is the GSoC admin for coreboot.

coreboot GSoC Mentors

Please add you name to this list and follow the coreboot mentor link to apply to be a coreboot mentor

• Stefan Reinauer
• Marc Jones
• QingPei Wang

Possible ideas

coreboot

Please look at our project ideas page.

flashrom

The flashrom project is somewhat independent of coreboot and has its own website and wiki. You can find project ideas for flashrom here.

Your own Project Ideas

We have come up with some ideas for cool Summer of Code projects. These are projects that we think can be managed in the short period of GSoC, and they cover areas where coreboot is trying to reach new users and new use cases.

But of course your application does not need to be based on any of the ideas listed below. The opposite: Maybe you have a great idea that we just didn't think of yet. Please let us know!

Feel free to contact us at the email address or IRC channel above, and don't hesitate to suggest whatever you have in mind.

Previous Summer of Code projects

We successfully participated in Google's Summer of Code in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. See our list of previous GSoC projects or Google's archive.

coreboot Summer of Code Application

Please complete the standard Google SoC 2012 application and project proposal. Prospective corebot GSoC student should provide the following information as part of their application. If you are applying for a flashrom project use common sense when using the template below, this is part of the test ;)

Name:

Email:

IM/IRC/Skype/other contact:

Country/Timezone:

School:

Degree Program:

Expected graduation date:

Most students have some time off planned during GSoC. Do you have any vacations? When and how long?

coreboot welcomes students from all backgrounds and levels of experience. To be seriously consider for coreboot GSoC, we recommend joining the mailing list and IRC channel. Introduce yourself and mention that you are a prospective GSoC student. Ask questions and discuss the project that you are considering. Community involvement is a key component of coreboot development. By the time you have submitted your application, you should have downloaded, built a and booted coreboot in QEMU, SimNow, or on real hardware. Please, email your serial output results to the mailing list.

The following information will help coreboot match students with mentors and projects.

Please comment on your software and firmware experience.

Have you participated in the coreboot community before?

Have you contributed to an open source project? Which one? What was your experience?

Have you built and run coreboot? Did you have problems?

Bonus, Did you find and fix a coreboot bug? Did you send a patch to gerrit (git push)?

Please provide an overview of your project and a break down your project in small specific goals. Think about the potential timeline. Explain what risks or potential problems your project might experience. What would you expect as a minimum level of success? Do you have a stretch goal?

How to apply

The Drupal project has a great page on How to write an SOC application.

Please also read Google's Advice for Students.