Google are running their "Summer of Code" again this year - for
background info see:
http://code.google.com/soc/
We took part in 2011 and 2012, and we're going to apply again this
year. Dan Colish and I are happy to act as admins again. I'll submit
the application (which needs to be done between 18th and 29th March).
I've updated the list of project ideas for students on the wiki from
last year, removing those done last year, and updating those where work
has been done outside GSoC:
http://trac.xapian.org/wiki/GSoCProjectIdeas
If you're interested in acting as a mentor for one of the ideas there,
or have an idea for a project with a scope suitable for a student to
complete in about 12 weeks, please update that page. Ideas without a
potential mentor aren't very useful though, so being willing to mentor
your new idea is helpful.
Ideas don't have to be for work on Xapian itself - projects related to
Xapian in other software are within scope. A wider range of project
ideas will give us a broader appeal to students.
The ideas list is an important factor Google use when choosing which
orgs to accept, so we need to have this list in good shape by March 29th
(just under 3 weeks away as I write this). You can still add and
improve ideas after that, but it matters less.
If you are a student eligible for GSoC and interested in working on
Xapian, please feel free to get in touch. You're welcome to propose
your own project idea rather than being restricted to what's on the
list.
If you want to discuss being a mentor or a student, or a project idea,
you can do so on the mailing list or on #xapian on freenode (if you
aren't already an IRC user, see http://trac.xapian.org/wiki/GSoC_IRC for
links to a web IRC client).
There's also a general GSoC IRC channel #gsoc on freenode.
Cheers,
Olly