About Gsoc

Hello everybody,

It is already mid July and you might ask what is my opinion on Google Summer of Code. But before that let me talk a little bit about the “git” software and organization.

My first contact with git was a long time ago, but I started to contribute only later after I got in the unviersity. This February I sent my first patch (it was actually a micro-patch with a lot of iterations). After that, I submitted another patch related to git test suite.

Now, as a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) project, I am converting git stash, but you probably know this from previous blog posts. I am not going to talk very much about it, since the rest of the blog is about this. I will try to focus more on my experience with the “Git” organization and with the “GSoC” program.

What can I say about the organization is that I love it. The people which I talked with are the best. Ten years ago IRC was a trend in my conutry (I believe it was everywhere). Now, some people might find it outdated, but in reality, this is where a lot of great and interesting conversation take place. If you want to start to contribute to git, I encourge you to visit #git-devel channel. It is the perfect place where your can find answers.

I think that Google Summer of Code is a great way to introduce students into open-source community. And this is very important. I suppose even people who are not that much into computers, might recognize at least one of this organizations and at some point used one of their products. This means that the open source softwares have a great impact on us, even if we might not be aware of that.

Many people consider that GSoC is only about open-source code, but I do believe that GSoC is actually about open-source communities. The people that are powering these communities are some of the greatest people in the world. They are excellent software developers that spend their free time to help other people access quality software. I am very happy that I got the opportunity to know some of these people.

One of the greatest people I ever met is my mentor, Johannes Schindelin. I am not that good with the words and to be honest, no words would make him justice. In short, he is the best mentor ever. Another amazing person is Junio Hamano, the Git maintainer. Even though I did not interact with him lately, I can say he is a wonderful person always ready to help.

A big thank you to both of you. I really appreciate your effort and anyone who takes part in organizing Google Summer of Code.

P.S: If I caught your attention when I mentioned the IRC channel, you might want to know about this event.