[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] Google Summer of Code 2012

[Stefano Sabatini]

On date Friday 2012-03-02 19:43:22 +0100, Stefano Sabatini encoded:
[...]
> A provisional text for the application follows, which is loosely based
> on the text I used for the ESA Socis 2011 application (I don't have
> any copyright claims on it, so feel free to adapt/change it
> whoever/whatever you are).
> 
> Please review.
[...]

I'm attaching an updated version, I hope I addressed all the remarks,
thanks everyone for the feedback.
-- 
FFmpeg = Faithless Fundamental Multimedia Proud Elitarian Glue
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* Organization id

FFmpeg

* Organization name

FFmpeg

* Organization description

FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and
stream audio and video. It includes libavcodec - the leading
audio/video codec library.

FFmpeg is possibly the most ubiquitous multimedia framework in the
FLOSS world, is used as the multimedia engine by a significant part of
multimedia applications, and provides the backend of possibly most
Internet-based multimedia transcoding services.

FFmpeg strives at being the *universal* multimedia toolset and
library, so it aims to support all possible multimedia formats and
devices.
Also it strives to be *complete*, meaning that it aims to provide full
fledged support for all operations involved with multimedia,
eventually relying on external projects when it makes sense.

* Organization home page url

http://www.ffmpeg.org

* Main organization license

GNU LGPL v2

* Backup admin

Still to determine

* What is the URL for your Ideas page?

http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=FFmpeg_Summer_of_Code_2012

* What is the main IRC channel for your organization?

#ffmpeg-devel on irc.freenode.net

* What is the main development mailing list for your organization?

The main development list is:
ffmpeg-devel at ffmpeg.org 

You can find contact information for this and other mailing lists at
the page:
http://ffmpeg.org/contact.html

* Why is your organization applying to participate in Google Summer of
  Code 2012? What do you hope to gain by participating?

We hope to involve more contributors in the community, and at the same
time we want to spread awareness of the project.

* Did your organization participate in past Google Summer of Codes? If
  so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges
  of your participation.

FFmpeg participated to the past editions of Google Summer since 2007,
in the previous year (GSoC 2011) we participated jointly with Libav.

You can find a comprehensive list of all the past applications and
tasks here:
http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=FFmpeg_Summer_Of_Code

* If your organization has not previously participated in Google Summer
  of Code, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?

N/A

* Does your organization have an application template you would like to
  see students use? If so, please provide it now.

No.

* What criteria did you use to select your mentors for this year's
  program? Please be as specific as possible.

Availability and qualification. Mentors propose themselves based on
their expertise in the domain area for the mentored tasks, and on
their skill to deal with students/people.

Mentors are usually veteran developers who delivered significant
contributions to the project and who deeply know the community and the
project itself. On the other hand there is no need for the
self-elected mentor to be a member of the FFmpeg community, provided
that he can prove sufficient technical knowledge for the task he
wishes to mentor.

* What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?

We'll try to avoid that they will disappear in the first place, so
we'll try to make sure that we have different ways to reach out each
student.  We'll also arrange to have periodical reports from students
in order to track their progress.

In case of a disappearing student, we'll try to get in communication
with him/her using all the possible channels at our disposal, and in
case the student can't be reached within a reasonable amount of time,
we'll declare his/her task failed.

* What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?

We'll try to assign a backup mentor to each task.

Even in case there is not an "official" backup mentor, we'll rely on
the developers community to help the student to accomplish the
assigned task.

* What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your
  project's community before, during and after the program?

We'll encourage the students to idle on IRC and we'll request them to
read and possibly participate to discussions on the main development
mailing-list. On the other hand we'll let the students choose the
communication means which better suit them (email, chat, direct voice
call or whatever, public or private communication as agreed with the
mentor).

We will also try to create a friendly environment where the students
can freely partecipate and where they can find support from the
community. In order to avoid misunderstandings and miscommunication
with the overall community we'll rely on personal comunication between
student and mentor in order to make the student aware of the "culture"
and of the implied rules of the community.

We hope the students will stay around after the task termination on
the ground that they will feel comfortable into the project and will
have genuine interest in continuing their effort with it.

* Are you a new organization who has a Googler or other organization to
  vouch for you? If so, please list their name(s) here.

N/A

* Are you an established or larger organization who would like to vouch
  for a new organization applying this year? If so, please list their
  name(s) here.

Any?