GSoC_2015_Mentoring_Organization_Application

This is a draft of the application that the phpMyAdmin project will send to Google to apply as a mentoring organization. Students should most likely look at the applicant guide.

Organization description

We're developing phpMyAdmin, a MySQL web interface. It supports most MySQL features, is widely used by database administrators and well supported by hosting providers.

Organization home page url

https://www.phpmyadmin.net/

Main organization license

GNU GPL v2 (in transition to 'GPLv2 or later'. All commits after 1 December 2013 are already 'GPLv2 or later')

Veteran/New

Veteran

If you chose "veteran" in the dropdown above, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation. Please also list your pass/fail rate for each year.

We did participate in 2014, having 40 proposals out of which we chose 6 projects, 6 of them were completed successfully and their code is now part of the phpMyAdmin 4.3 release. The most challenging part was definitely choosing good students and projects from the proposals.

We did participate in 2013, having 25 proposals out of which we chose 6 projects, 6 of them were completed successfully and their code is now part of the phpMyAdmin 4.1 release.

We did participate in 2012, having 32 proposals out of which we chose 6 projects, 5 of them were completed successfully and their code is now part of the phpMyAdmin 4.0 release.

In 2011, we had 54 proposals out of which we chose 8 projects, 7 of them were completed successfully and their code was included in phpMyAdmin 3.5.

In 2010 we did participate as well, having 64 proposals, out of which we chose 6 projects, which were completed successfully and their code was included in phpMyAdmin 3.4.

In years before, we did not participate directly, but in Google Summer of Code 2008 and 2009 the MySQL organization was kind enough to offer slots for our projects (five projects in 2009 and two in 2008).

The code from all projects was immediately merged to our code base.

If you chose "new" in the dropdown above, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?

N/A

Why is your organization applying to participate in Google Summer of Code 2015? What do you hope to gain by participating?

We got great contributions through GSoC in previous years and we want to continue improving our tool and bring new features to our users. We also want to attract new young developers to our team.

What is the URL for your Ideas list?

https://wiki.phpmyadmin.net/pma/GSoC_2015_Ideas_List

What is the main development mailing list for your organization?

https://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/phpmyadmin-devel

What is the main IRC channel for your organization?

Channel #phpmyadmin on FreeNode

How many potential mentors do you have for this year's program? What criteria did you use to select them?

We have three potential mentors.

Selection was solely based on fact that a project developer is willing to act as a mentor. All of them are long standing developers and they have great knowledge of existing code base. Most of them also have experience from past Google Summer of Code events.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?

We want to start cooperating with the students as soon as possible to be able to see their commitment to the task even before choosing them for the project.

Students will be pushed to publish their results weekly, so that in case something goes wrong, it is clearly visible and we can work with the student to fix this issue.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?

All members are long time developers of the project and thus have quite a big motivation not to disappear. In case this would happen, several other project developers are prepared to replace the member who has no time to continue his duty.

What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before and during the program?

We require students to be active before the program starts. We expect them to submit a patch solving a bug or implementing a small new feature, as part of their application. The goal is to get them familiar with the code and interact with the community in case they have questions. The current developers review the submitted patches and comment on them, in order to show the applicants what we expect from their patches regarding coding style, etc. In 2012 we've introduced a programming contest, listing a few challenges (bugs and small features) to be solved, aiming at GSoC applicants to get familiar with the project and our code base.

We already have several applicants active right now and they are actively participating in our mailing list.

During the program we require public weekly reports, so that everybody can follow status of the project and give students some hints or suggestions.

What will you do to encourage that your accepted students stick with the project after Google Summer of Code concludes?

We will show them during the program, that being part of the phpMyAdmin team would be a great experience for them. We also have prepared a specific page about this (https://wiki.phpmyadmin.net/pma/GSoC_2015_After_the_Summer).

Are you a new organization who has a Googler or other organization to vouch for you? If so, please list their name(s) here.

N/A

Are you an established or larger organization who would like to vouch for a new organization applying this year? If so, please list their name(s) here.

N/A

Category:Google Summer of Code 2015