From The Neuros Technology Wiki

This is the application form that we will send to Google for Summer of Code 2007. It's just here for your perusal

Contents 1 About the organization 1.1 What is your Organization's Name? 1.2 What is your Organization's Homepage? 1.3 Describe your organization. 1.4 Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2007? What do you hope to gain by participating? 1.5 What license does your project use? 1.6 URL for your ideas page 1.7 What is the main development mailing list for your organization? 1.8 Where is the main IRC channel for your organization? 1.9 Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now. (optional) 1.10 Who will be your backup organization administrator? Please enter their Google Account address. We will email them to confirm, your organization will not become active until they respond. (optional) 2 About Your Mentors 2.1 What criteria did you use to select these individuals as mentors? Please be as specific as possible. 2.2 Who will your mentors be? Please enter their Google Account address separated by commas. If your organization is accepted we will email each mentor to invite them to take part. (optional) 3 About The Program 3.1 What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students? 3.2 What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors? 3.3 What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program? 3.4 What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes?

[edit] About the organization

[edit] What is your Organization's Name?

Neuros Technology

[edit] What is your Organization's Homepage?

http://open.neurostechnology.com

[edit] Describe your organization.

Neuros is a manufacturer of multimedia devices (audio players, media centers, personal video players) fully committed to the use of open source software and methods for all current and future products. All the source code is released as open source, mostly under the GPL license, and community involvement is a key component both in the design of the devices (with schematics for the hardware freely available) and in the development of software (with regular flow of patches from the community being included in the official repository). The current focus (and focus for SoC) is on the Neuros OSD, nominally a media center/recorder but actually a fully hackable Linux-based general purpose media device which use beyond the original function is fully supported and encouraged.

[edit] Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2007? What do you hope to gain by participating?

We hope to be able to involve new contributors in our community, especially those who will remain even after SoC is complete. We also see our participation as a good way to increase awareness to our efforts in applying open source methods in the field of multimedia hardware (particuliarly in the area of set-top boxes), which traditionally is dominated by closed source, proprietary walled-garden technology. Finally, we also want to promote the development of open source and our community to a Chinese student audience, where our main in house development is done.

[edit] What license does your project use?

We use GPL(v2) for most of the code, with some LGPL and some BSD-ish licensed portions.

[edit] URL for your ideas page

http://wiki.neurostechnology.com/index.php/Summer_of_Code

[edit] What is the main development mailing list for your organization?

mailing list address: Neuros@googlegroups.com web interface: http://groups.google.com/group/neuros

[edit] Where is the main IRC channel for your organization?

#neuros on the Freenode network

[edit] Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now. (optional)

Students should submit resumes or bios with no fixed application templates. Besides, we prefer to just talk with prospective students directly in IRC or via email to gauge, aptitude, reciprocal interest and compatibility. The standard employee interview process will likely not be used for these students, but will be considered as a secondary option.

[edit] Who will be your backup organization administrator? Please enter their Google Account address. We will email them to confirm, your organization will not become active until they respond. (optional)

Main administrator: Ugo Riboni, nerochiaro@gmail.com, based in Milan, Italy

Backup administrator: Michael Gao, simegao@gmail.com based in Xiamen, China

[edit] About Your Mentors

[edit] What criteria did you use to select these individuals as mentors? Please be as specific as possible.

Mentors are active members of the community, with a good contribution track record and/or interesting achievements to their credit. They have all demonstrated a good ability in interacting with newbies and other community members in general and have a good knowledge of the code base. Mentors also have agreed to be available for a reasonable amount of time during SoC, of course.

[edit] Who will your mentors be? Please enter their Google Account address separated by commas. If your organization is accepted we will email each mentor to invite them to take part. (optional)

• Ugo Riboni (nerochiaro), nerochiaro@gmail.com Italy
• Tom Bruno (crweb), allyourrejects@gmail.com USA
• Anders Gustaffson, andersg@0x63.nu Sweden
• Adam Torgerson (may1937), adam.torgerson@colorado.edu USA

[edit] About The Program

[edit] What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?

We try to politely contact and find out what is going on, but we will drop anyone who either doesn't respond after a reasonable amount of time or just throws certifiably lame excuses at us. The idea is that while we understand that disappearing might happen for good reasons, we also recognize that it's very rare not to be able to send an email or two to notify and explain.

[edit] What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?

One of the mentors is employed by the organization, so can't disappear by definition. The others are all members in good standing of the community so we know they will not to disappear without notice. In case that happens there's not much we can do, other than putting some of the other mentors on double shifts and start a world wide man hunt.

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

The focus of pre-program promotion will be on community members/visitors to our open site as well as Chinese students. In China, we will promote the program at universities with posted flyers as well as by notifying professors we have relationships with. We will also promote to forums and discussion channels that attract chinese developers.

The IRC channel is the best place for students to be and communicate with mentors, so we will require students to be there often (barring strong time zone constraints). The people in our community are generally a friendly and relaxed crowd, and help is basically never denied to anyone who shows he's doing some basic homework before asking questions. We hope that students will keep improving and expanding on their SoC efforts after the end of the program by including them in the official distribution if they are successful. We also from time to time provide bounties (with cash or hardware prizes), so this can be another incentive to stick around and contribute.

[edit] What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes?

In addition to the above, Neuros will recruit from the participants for full and part time work, as well as to continue to promote the acheivements of our community members.