Google Summer of Code 2009, students wanted

This week list of organizations accepted to Google Summer of Code 2009 was announced. Students have time from March 23 to April 3 to have a look at lists of ideas, talk to their would-be mentors and apply.

Here is a rough list of graphics related projects:

• Aqsis (ideas list)
• Blender Foundation (ideas list)
• BRL-CAD (ideas list)
• Creative Commons (ideas list)
• Crystal Space (ideas list)
• GIMP (ideas list)
• GNOME (ideas list)
• Hugin/Panotools (ideas list)
• Inkscape (ideas list)
• KDE (ideas list)
• OGRE (ideas list)
• OpenICC (ideas list)
• OpenImageIO (ideas list)
• OpenStreetMap (ideas list)
• OSGeo (ideas list)
• Scribus (ideas list)
• X.Org (ideas list)

Of them I happen to be backup admin for hugin/panotools (somewhat traditionally ) and OpenICC. And right now I’d love to plug OpenICC.

Last year there was a successful project to create KDE Control Center for color management. What we need to do now is make one of KDE application aware of these settings and start making use of Oyranos. DigiKam sounds like a perfect choice here. Continuation of “Color management near X” project is quite important too — we need to become friends with Compiz at least.

So far I’ve heard several excellent ideas for GSoC projects for GIMP/GEGL, but there is somewhat lacking activity on Inkscape and Scribus fronts. I’d be happy to see more proposals for hugin/panotools as well.

And one more little thing. I listed GNOME and KDE projects above because through these projects you can work on applications like F-Spot (three projects last year) and Krita (one project last year).

For years GSoC has proven to be a great way to introduce new people to free software world (and keep the new blood pouring in ), but also to be a great challenge for restless minds and playground to shape team work skills. You really can learn a lot from this experience and, coincidentally, make a valuable contribution