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Google Season of Docs 2023

Gaurav Mishra edited this page Mar 22, 2023 · 5 revisions

Welcome to the project idea page for GSoD 2023.

Introduction

The FOSSology project aims to participate in the upcoming Google Season of Docs 2023. This is the project idea page for the same. Please see the following resources for finding out more about FOSSology in general:

Interested in Application?

Mentors

Interested in becoming a mentor? Please reach out to us!

About the project

Create FOSSology User Documentation

Currently, FOSSology has no proper user documentation. Most of the FOSSology guide is written in the wiki pages of the GitHub repository. The wiki pages lack the clarity and navigability of user documentation. Many of the recent developments in the project are not documented or partially documented. The wiki pages have not been updated and maintained in years. Since FOSSology is in active development and one of the top tools for license compliance, plenty of users and organizations keep joining. And onboarding hasn’t been so lovely for them.

Idea

We would like to create user documentation from scratch using the modern documentation framework Docusauras that focuses on easy onboarding, detailed features, and options. We would like to consolidate all the FOSSology documentation at a single location with a clear and easy to navigate chapters.

Furthermore, we have a raw structure of the proposed documentation in this document. You are welcome to add comments to the documents.

Scope of the project

This project aims to achieve the following goals by the end of the Google Season of Docs period.

  • Create an architecture for the FOSSology user documentation and decide on the categories, chapters, and topics.
  • Research and write clear and rich documentation, keeping in mind the technical expertise of the users.
  • Adding up-to-date screenshots and animations.
  • Incorporate feedback from the FOSSology community into the documentation.
  • Provide possible documentation for developers.

Out of scope

  • Internationalization of the documentation
  • Improving the wiki pages
  • Any other contribution made to the projects
  • Our first goal is to create good user documentation, so we are keeping tutorials out of the scope.
  • Any contribution related to https://fossology.org and https://fossology.github.io

Measuring the project's success

We are aiming for two technical writers to join us and complete most of the documentation in four months. We will track the project's success using an open-source workflow (issue->pull request->merge) and the amount of work completed. For the least, we aim to achieve the following milestones for the project to be considered successful:

  • A detailed architecture for the user documentation is completed and available.
  • 70% of all goals (pages of documentation) have been completed and published.

Timeline

With two technical writers, this project will take approximately 4 months to complete. The first few weeks will be dedicated to the onboarding and community bonding of the tech writers. However, we expect a detailed timeline from the tech writer once they are hired.

Preferred technical writer skills

  • Knowledge of markup languages (markdown, asciidoc, etc.)
  • Knowledge of React and JavaScript is useful, but not required.
  • Previous Technical writing experience: Blogs, Documentation, GSoD, StackOverFlow, etc.
  • Knowledge about software licensing is not necessary, but will be helpful.
  • Ability to set up and use the software and understand it's working, we will be helping you with this, but some experience is always nice to have.
  • Good English writing skills (grammatical, choice of words, etc.)
  • A Linux environment is preferred over Windows.

Budget

Budget item Amount (in USD) Running Total Notes
Technical Writer 4000 8000 2 writers for 4 months
Volunteer/Mentor 400 8800 2 mentors
Swags/T-Shirts 150 8950
TOTAL 8950 USD

NOTE: This page will be updated for all future updates on GSoD 2023.