Hello all,
I just found out about Google Summer of Code three days ago. I have
always wanted to contribute to open source, but have thus far only
contributed to very minor projects. In particular, I want to eventually
be able to contribute to the Linux kernel. Over the semester, I have
been studying OS design in class and Linux in particular in my spare
time. However, it is such a massive entity that I think it makes more
sense to start with something more approachable. I am excited about GSoC
as it looks to be a very good introduction to getting involved with open
source. Wget is something that I use all the time, and I knew that I
should look into this when I saw that it was a GSoC participating
project.
While I have quite a bit of programming experience in personal and
university projects, it is quite another thing to code for a significant
and established program. I feel that this would be an important next
step for my development as a programmer. I believe that I am not as
experienced as some applicants, but, encouraged by the "Am I Good
Enough?" page, decided that it can't hurt to get involved. Regardless of
acceptance for GSoC, I intend to work on patches and contribute in
general.
I spent the majority of yesterday reading and writing code in wget. I've
compiled, run the tests, and worked on patches. I wrote 2 minor patches,
but found afterward that they had already been submitted by other
applicants. Also, in order to really understand how wget works, I have
been implementing gopher support. There may not be any demand for such a
feature, but by playing with it I have been learning how the existing
protocols are implemented and how to code in such a way that makes sense
with the existing infrastructure, writing test cases, etc. Additionally,
I just like gopher sites. I know that I need to come up with a project
idea though soon; the testing FTP server intrigues me.
Thanks for joining up with GSoC,
Evan Krell
(GillSans on irc)