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Information to fill https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/dashboard/org-admin/application/ or http://sophia.estec.esa.int/socis/?q=projects_application_form

Why does your org want to participate in Google Summer of Code?

Scilab is an open source software, we are looking for contributors as well as trying to promote the language to students. For us, this is the opportunity to meet young users willing to improve the software base. Our previous GSoC has proven very helpful as we are still in contact with the students and they have become contributors.

GSoC is also an opportunity for the company to communicate on the external contributions we receive and reduce the gap between our developers and our users. It is a way for us to explore new features that will be developed as external modules (or toolboxes) or on dedicated branches as proof of concept.


for SOCIS application

Scilab is widely used as a computing software on the Space industry. For instance, in France the CNES used it during orbital flight programmation, valid land-site detection of the ROSETTA mission. The CNES developed an open-source Scilab toolbox called Celestlab specific to the Space domain.

In Germany, the DLR also use Scilab and we try with them to push the usage of in-flight simulator using Scilab code.

How many potential mentors have agreed to mentor this year?

1-5

How will you keep mentors engaged with their students?

Each mentor is a longstanding member of the project and most of them are employee of the company. They also have a good knowledge of all the proposal listed on the wiki and we will co-mentor each others to avoid any slow response times. As an admin, I will also track the overall advancement of each project and will exchange on video calls, at least once a week, with all mentors.

In case of conflict or disappearance, we will be able to switch the mentor during the program as most of the discussion will be public on the GSoC ML or project private on our dedicated IRC channel. The previous experiences on both GSoC and SOCIS, give us also some confidence about mentors management and how/when we will be able to switch them.

How will you help your students stay on schedule to complete their projects?

Each student is expected to submit a proposed schedule as part of their application process. This schedule lists deadlines and the students are expected to follow this schedule. Student progress is monitored through regular code submissions and code reviews. This year we will focus on improving Scilab directly and we will merge features as soon as possible. For external modules (what we call toolboxes) each student have to submit a first version during the community bonding period and at the start of the coding period we enforce a "release early, release often" model.

How will you get your students involved in your community during GSoC?

Students have to introduce themselves on the mailing list as part of the application process, and the mailing list continues to be an important part of their involvement throughout the summer. Having a dedicated GSoC ML help them to have dedicated semi-public discussion about their advancement and we usually have some interactions between students during the program period.

In case of a disappearing student, we first try to ping it by mail asking for news. After a week or so, we re-ping it about the project advancement. And then the mentor spend some time trying to improve the code base and let the student know the advancement. In the past, we found that letting the student know that things are moving might re-motivate it.

After the first releases of their work (either on a nightly build or on a toolbox), the user ML is used to integrate them to the community by publicly announcing the availability of the feature and we let them managing the feedback by themselves.

How will you keep students involved with your community after GSoC?

To keep a student involved and as each project target a specific feature our mentors try to reach the goal (either a merge to master or a toolbox release) together with the student, to let him have a good feeling about its future in the project. If the feature was not merged, the mentor have to justify why both to the admin and to the student.

Another important point is to explain the current objectives of the team to each student before the end of the program. What is the plan ? what can be done easily next ? We try to implicate them on the current development and motivate them to re-use their newly acquired knowledge.

I also re-contact directly all of them 2 month after the end of the program to let them know that we have some easy to fix bugs, giving them the bugzilla links and asking for their help.

Has your org been accepted as a mentoring org in Google Summer of Code before?

YES

What is your success/fail rate per year?

If your org has applied for GSoC before but not been accepted, select the years:

Are you part of a foundation/umbrella organization?

No

What year was your project started?

1990

Anything else we should know?


2022-09-08 09:27