Guidelines for Students Participating in GSOC 2016 for Privly

Overview

• Both new and prior contributors to the Privly Foundation projects will be considered as applicants.
• Students should submit a bug fix for the project first. (Please engage with proposed mentors to identify an appropriate bug that will demonstrate your skills and capabilities).
• In most cases you should complete several of the "Levels" found on the development guide. Without stepping through these levels it is unlikely that you will be able to write a good proposal.
• Students should get involved with projects now.

Expectations

Communication

• It is expected that students will report to the main Privly discussion list (privly@googlegroups.com) at the beginning of the project to introduce themselves and their project to the rest of the Privly community.
• It is expected that students will report to the main Privly discussion list at a minimum once every week providing a summary of current activities with pointers to their work in the code and on the wiki.
• It is also advisable to keep all development related discussions on the developer's mailing lists (see below) so that other developers can provide feedback & suggestions on the ideas being worked out and for future archival purposes.
• GSoC-related discussions should be prefaced with "GSoC" in the subject line.

IRC Channels

We maintain and monitor the #privly IRC channel on Freenode. Freenode provides a web interface, but students are encouraged to use a client that can continually idle on IRC. We often help people new to the IRC channel figure out no-cost ways of permanently idling. For example, as students you can get free hosting through at least the summer. We highly recommend you setup a machine to permanently idle on IRC.

Mailing Lists

We maintain several e-mail discussion lists. The main point of entry for prospect GSoC students and GSoC discussions and reports to the community through the GSoC program is our main discussion list: privly@googlegroups.com.
Join the Main Development list
Join the Read-only Announcements list
Join the testers mailing list

Coding

It is expected that students will read and follow the developer guidelines for the project that they are working with.

Documentation

• It is expected that students will document all of their work in an appropriate places within their project and on the Privly wiki. Mentors will help point you where to write documentation.

Work Load

• It is expected that students will treat this as a full time job (This means approximately 40 hours per week). Students should disclose any other commitments to other jobs, internships, etc.

Application Process

Application Template

It is expected that all students follow this template for their application. Entire Application should be within 7500 Characters. Applications are not evaluated for length.

1. Personal Details

• Name
• Communication details - Email(!), Freenode IRC Nickname(!), IM, Skype, Blog etc (! = compulsory)
• Include Biographical information about yourself, your education, country, timezone etc.
• If you have a link to a resume/CV/LinkedIn profile, include it here
• Please provide an overview of your exposure to similar technologies and/or FOSS in general.
• Please state which "levels" you have completed from the development guide.
• Please answer the question - “Why would you like to help the Privly project?”

2. Personal Availability

• Have you reviewed the timeline for GSoC 2016?
• Do you have any significant conflicts with the listed schedule? If so, please list them here. Conflicts will rarely result in your proposal not being picked, but withholding conflicts from your application will likely result in a "fail" during the course of the summer.
• Will you need to finish your project prior to the end of the GSoC?
• Are there any significant periods during the summer that you will not be available?

3. Project Abstract

Provide a brief overview of the proposed idea and objectives you want to achieve with it here. (250 word limit).

4. Project Plan

This section is to provide the detail of your project proposal. Take as much space as is necessary.

• Project Deliverable - What is the essence of the project? What capability are you looking at adding to Privly that will expand its capability for online privacy?
• Project Justification - What is the relevance of your idea to the project? Why do you think its important to have this idea integrated with the Privly project?
• Implementation Plan - How are you going to implement your project? Use this section to expand in as much detail as possible how it should be constructed.
• Future Options - Identify some aspects of the project that may not be within the scope of this submission, but could form the basis for future work that would build upon the outcomes of your project
• Relevant Experience - Please list all experience you have that is directly relevant to the proposed project, and how they would help you deliver the project. If you have contributed to the Privly project previously, please clearly outline your contributions.

You can also include links to additional details like diagrams etc outlining your ideas acting as supplementary information for your proposal outside of this scope. But it is highly advised to follow the KISS principle and stay as specific as possible.

5. Project Goals and Timeline

Clearly outline your timeline and goals for the project. All goals must follow the SMART methodology - they should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound. Each goal should explicitly tell us how we can measure it (e.g. code committed to master) and the date it is due. This should be provided as three columns - Due Date, SMART Goal, and Measure. The project is looking for explicit and well-written goals - proposals that contain broad and general goals will not be accepted. The more specific your goals, the better chance you have of being accepted.

These should be broken down into the following stages.

1. Work already undertaken - What research have you undertaken in this area in advance? (these can just be bullet points and are not required to follow the SMART methodology)
2. First trimester (22 April - 23 May) - identify the SMART goals you have for the community bonding period. Most of these are likely to revolve around further scoping of the project with the community, engaging with the community, and updating and finalizing the project plan.
3. Second trimester (24 May - 27 June) - identify the draft SMART goals you have for the first half of the project. These will be used to assess project process and form the basis for the mid-term evaluation.
4. Third trimester (28 June - 23 August) - identify the draft SMART goals you have for the second half of the project. These will be used to assess the whole project and in conjunction with the mid-term goals, form the basis for the final evaluation.

We recognize that the goals may change during the project, and the mentors will accept modifications to the goals at any time. For example, discussion during the community engagement stage may change the scope of the project, and the goals may need to be subsequently modified. As such, the goals are not hard-and-fast, but we do want to see reasonable effort go into the initial project timeline.

The intent is to maintain these as a shared Google Spreadsheet so that mentors can track progress in the spreadsheet.

The Project Goals and Timeline will form a significant part of the assessment of your application, as well as mid-term and final evaluations.

Communication with Privly Team During Application Process

It is encouraged for students to communicate with the Privly team members during the application process to help guide their applications. Venues to discuss projects include the Privly development mailing list and IRC. Please avoid contacting mentors directly unless it is a personal matter. Mark the subject of your emails with [GSoC].

If your questions are specific to a particular Privly Project, mentors may direct you to a more specific mailing list or IRC channel. You should not expect to use personal email, IRC direct messaging, social network messaging, text messaging, etc. to communicate with mentors.

Also please note that your potential mentor may be up to 12 hours ahead or behind your time zone. If you use IRC to communicate, please "idle" in the IRC channel until you get an answer. If you ask a question and leave the channel within a few minutes, you won't get an answer.