OSPP

Konqi is giving a lesson!

Ideas for OSPP 2024

All students and developers are welcome to participate in the Open Source Promotion Plan program with KDE.

This program differs a bit from GSoC, check the differences in the OSPP Program FAQ. Notably:

• Mentors are directly paid, it does not go to KDE.
• Mentors cannot guide students to develop through code or help debugging.
• Code must be merged for the project to be validated.

All participants

Mentors, administrators and students: read OSPP Program occasionally. Also read the Program FAQ.

All participants will need a OSPP Portal account in order to join the program. Mentors will receive an email to activate an account after the proposal is approved, while students need to register youself. In addition, all KDE students need to join the KDE student list, KDE-OSPP. In addition, if you do not yet have a KDE account; set that up now.

Programming Language

While the main KDE development occurs in C++, we do have bindings for many other languages, including (but not limited to) Python, Ruby and C#. Some bindings are more stable and more mature than others. Some may not be suitable yet for serious development; be sure to take that into account before making your choice.

C++ will be accepted for any project. Submissions and ideas for projects in any other language should specifically mention the choice.

Instructions for potential contributors

You will be required to produce code for KDE during the coding period. Your mentors, KDE developers, will dedicate a portion of their time to mentoring you , specific code and debugging are not included. Therefore, we seek candidates who are committed to helping KDE long-term and are willing to both do quality work, and be proactive in communicating with your mentor(s).

You don't have to be a proven developer -- in fact, this whole program is meant to facilitate joining KDE and other Open Source communities. However, experience in coding and/or experience with KDE/Qt libraries and applications is welcome. The KDE community maintains a separate wiki page with general information about getting started with KDE development. This will help you understand what techniques you may need to learn or master to create contributions.

You should start learning the components that you plan on working on before the start date. KDE developers are available on mailing lists and on Matrix/IRC for help. The timeline from OSPP sets aside a week in the last week of June this year, use that time to get an early start. Good communication is key. You should plan to communicate with your team at least daily, and formally report progress and plans weekly. Contributors who neglect active communication will be failed.

General instructions

First of all, please read the instructions common to all participants and the OSPP FAQ, and pay special attention to the Student Eligibility.

Recommended steps

1. Read OSPP's student guide, and also Suggestions for students.
2. Ensure proof of student eligibility has been passed.
3. Take a look at the list of available projects
4. Come up with project that you're interested in
5. Join the KDE-devel list , #kde-devel Matrix room and [#kde-devel IRC channel], introduce yourself, and meet your fellow developers
6. Write your proposal, consult the relevant KDE developers in the Matrix or IRC chat rooms in a timely manner if your encounter any problems.
7. Remember: you must link to work such as commits in your proposal
8. Remember to explain your interest in KDE as an organization as well as the project
9. Submit your proposal using OSPP's Portal interface ahead of the deadline

Planning for three months of work is probably the most difficult part, but collaborating with KDE developers is a fun and rewarding experience. Trust in yourself and your abilities, the first principle of planning is that your plan must be fully covered by your available time.

A good start is finding out what the most pressing issues are in the projects in which you are interested. Join the mailing lists for that project or go into its IRC channel or Matrix room: meet developers and your potential mentor, as well as learning the technical requirements/skills. We recommend strongly active communication before the beginning of OSPP. While we don't screen candidates based on early participation until ideas is actually realized, we want every potential contributor to have a good start.

Potential contributor proposal guidelines

WIP

Instructions for mentors

Ideas

If you're a KDE developer and you wish to participate in Summer OSPP, make a proposal in the ideas page, based what your KDE project needs.

If you wish to mentor, please read the instructions common to all participants and the OSPP Program FAQ. Also, please contact the maintainer for your application or module and get the go-ahead from hir before editing the ideas page, adding your idea.

Your idea proposal should be a brief description of what the project is, what the desired goals would be, what the student should know and an email address for contact. Students are not required to follow your idea to the letter, so regard your proposal as inspiration for the students.

The OSPP is a regional event, most of the potential contributors are likely to use Chinese as their native language. As such, ideas and proposals related to Chinese localization and RISCV are likely to attract more attention from potential contributors.

Here are some possible ideas/suggestions:

• Software that lacks Chinese localization support
• Add Chinese features or translations to KDE applications, such as lunar calendar support (in scheduling or calendar), Chinese characters/word sorting, input method, Chinese spell-checking, and so on.
• Improve the performance of KDE software on the RISCV platform

Mentoring

Any KDE developer can be a mentor if you meet the OSPP eligibility requirements. We will potentially assign a student to you who has never worked on such a large project and will need some help. Make sure you're up for the task. Mentoring takes time, and lots and lots of communication.

Before subscribing yourself as a mentor, please make sure that your application or module maintainer is aware of that.

TODO How to confirm mentor involvement in the team?

Prospective mentors should read the OSPP Program Mentor Guide. This is our first year participating and we lack a well HOWTO article to help mentors, but Burgess Chang will be available for advice and help with OSPP.

You will subscribe to the KDE-OSPP-Mentor mailing list to discuss ideas. You will need to read the proposals as they come in, and vote on the proposals, according to guidelines discussed on KDE-OSPP-Mentor. Daily communication is required with your student during the Community Bonding period, and multiple times per week during the coding period. And The frequency of communication depends on how active the student is.

Finally, know that we will never assign you to a project you do not want to work on. We will not assign you more projects than you can/want to take on either.

Signing up as a mentor

To become a mentor:

1. . TODO How to contact the administrators, and let them know for which project you want to mentor and give us your public account email.
2. . Log in to OSPP Portal after being added as a mentor by one of the admins
3. . Subscribe to KDE-ospp-mentor mail list

Instructions for module/application maintainers

WIP