GSoC FAQ

This is the page for some of the frequently asked questions by the prospective participants of the Google Summer of Code 2016.

General Questions

Am I required to be local?

Q: If someone is selected as a student coder through the Summer of Code, will they need to be in the Boston area over the summer?

A: No, we are not asking anyone to move to Boston for the summer. While you are most welcome to come and work at the Berkman Center if you are selected for an internship, we will not force anyone accepting an internship to move.

Do I need to keep regular business hours?

Q: If I'm selected, can I work any time of the day that I want?

A: We are going to favor coders that are available for a significant amount of time Monday to Friday during [EST] business hours. We have found that synchronous communication is key to working together effectively. Consider this a requirement.

Can I have other jobs/internships/consulting gigs?

Q: I've got a consulting gig, an internship and another job lined up. Cool?

A: No. We want your full attention for the summer - it's a real job, with a real commitment from both sides.

Do I have to be Harvard-affiliated already?

Q: Is this limited to Harvard and/or Berkman coders?

A: No. This is open to any and all that would like to apply.

Will applying to a certain project give me an advantage?

Q: Are some projects a higher priority than others? If so, what are they?

A: No. Our selection depends on the strength of the applicants and the strength of the applications. We are most interested in finding the right candidates.

Are there any preferred languages/frameworks?

Q: What are they?

A: We prefer that the language and framework for a proposal match the language or framework an existing project is written in. For projects that are orthogonal to an existing code base, we prefer Ruby, PHP, or Perl. We prefer MVC frameworks or micro-frameworks, so for Ruby it'd be Rails or Sinatra, for PHP it'd be Symfony2. Perl would be Catalyst or Dancer. There is some flexibility in frameworks but less in languages. We are not interested in proprietary languages at all, nor in .NET (even under Mono). We also prefer jQuery.

These preferences are based on the skill set of the Berkman geek team and our long-term ability to maintain and host a limited set of languages.

Do you accept late applications?

Q: I'm really late to this. I can still apply after the deadline?

A: No. March 25, 2016 at 19:00 UTC is a hard deadline. Google's policies do not permit us to consider late applications.

Where can I get more information?

Q: I'm still confused. Where can I find out more about GSoC program specifics?

A: No fear! The GSoC homepage has some great general resources for interested students. We suggest checking out:

• The GSoC Student Manual
• The official GSoC FAQ

How will the Berkman Center for Internet & Society be evaluating students?

Q: How can I show that I am interested, energized, knowledgeable and likeable? I really want to work on one of the projects that is listed on your ideas page and I’m unsure of where to show my interest.

A: We are looking for a student that is technically skilled, has good communication skills, is a hard worker and has set enough time aside that will allow them to succeed. Student applicants can show technical skill and knowledge by sharing code for projects they have written previously or are currently working on. We appreciate previous experience in free/open source projects (e.g. contributions visible in Github), in projects related to the one applying, or in previous GSoCs. Student applicants can also check out the codebase, if one for the projects exists, and become familiar with the underlying languages and technologies.

Student applicants can show their communication skills by having thoughtful discussions with the project mentors. We would love for our student applicants to be able to ask thoughtful questions. By thoughtful, we mean here having taken the diligence to check out the FAQs, documentation, taken time to check out the code, and tried to install and/or run the app.

We’d love you to be able to be familiar with the project itself so that you know you would be excited to work on it over the course of the summer. We want to provide you with the information you need to be excited about the project and know it is a fit for you.

Can I start contributing now?!

Q: Can I start submitting pull requests? What can I do to get ahead in the application process? I want to get started!

A: We appreciate the excitement, but we'd prefer applicants hold off. We trust you can fix the small bugs, but we're more interested in your approach to solving larger problems. The bigger things are more interesting to you and to us. Think about how you would spend your time this summer. What would you do to improve the project besides the small fixes? We are interested both in your technical skill, but also your holistic understanding of the project. Ultimately, we will judge your application by the thoughtfulness of your proposal.

What does “loosely defined” mean?

Q: I want a specific list of issues to tackle. Why don’t you provide any of that for the “loosely defined” projects?

A: For some projects, part of the exercise for you this summer will be figuring out your own path forward. For projects like Curricle and Tools for Time Capsule Encryption, we’re in the very early stages--we haven’t even figured out schema yet. We want you to be creative, define your own methods, and identify areas you think are worth exploring.