Whats up with Hatim!

Google's Summer of code application deadline for students has been extended for one week. It's now Monday April 7th 2008. This is good as well as bad. It's good because it gives me one more week to make my application even better, and it's bad because I will be spending now more time in the application process than in actual coding

Edit:
Well I didn't spend more time on my application, but I was able to get Jetty running through maven. Apprently User Mode Linux was preventing Jetty from binding to an IP, but after migrating to Xen every thing works smoothly now. It seems that I would also be able to run OpenNMS now :).

I am currently following the following good links for sample application devlopemnt

http://www.lulu.com/content/1087191 (Set of tutorials to start devlopment with Spring and Hibernate using Maven2)

http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2007/03/01/building-web-applications-with-maven-2.html (Maven 2 Web application devlopment tutorial using Jetty plugin)

I have also found the following book to be useful

OpenNMS got selcted for Google Summer of code 2008. It seems that making enough noise on IRC and mailing lists does work :). I have also got my slef registered as a part time student in Virtual University of Pakistan as a Masters leve certificate course student, so it seems that pieces are falling into their places. I am thinking of applying for OpenNMS hibernate implementation coding. Right now I am just applying and I have hope that I will make it. But unlike last year I think I better take some time off from my full time job as I wont be able to juggle between job, course and SoC. For now I better post samples of hibernate coding on my site (possibly running under jetty)

 

It saddens me to blog about it but I guess it has to be done. As of July 16th 2007 I am no longer part of Summer of Code 2007. I started off working quite late on the project, some of it has to do with my present circumstances with job, but alot of it has to do with my time managment. i did learn some thing from this experience, but in the end this project was a failure. But no harm done, its all part of learning process in life. Projects fail ..and infact lots of projects in software engineering fail.

As I had mentioned in a previous blog entry, this year I put up four proposals to Google Summer of code. The final decision on these proposals was scheduled for April 12, 2007 5:00 am (Pakistan time). After a long night of waiting I finally received official word from Google Inc. that one of my application has been selected for Google Summer of Code. In total I had four (meaningful) applications. Oddly enough I had not received even a single comment on any one of them. During conflict resolution period I got a comment from Lanka Foundation( Sahana Project) saying that my proposal was comprehensive and complete proposal. It would have been accepted if it were if not for the alternative acceptance I had received. Alternative what???.

This came as a cautious but pleasant surprise. Sahana people were the first one to comment on my applications. Naturally I assumed that I had been selected by any of the other three organizations. I went to some SOC-irc channels and with the help of some (non related)mentors I found out that I was tagged by Internet2.edu. I then contacted the Internet2 mentor related to my project via email citing that I had no clue if I were being selected. He replied saying that there was no need from his side to post any comment on my application, it was good to go. No one had contacted them for any conflict resolution regarding me. It was the personal choice of SAHANA mentors to not contact Internet2 , even though they found my application compelling enough.

I suspect that this could have happened to my other applications as well. Where mentors were reluctant to contact me when they saw that I already have a mentor. Therefore I would propose the following additions to the SOC web application.

• There should be information in the webapp if some one gets tagged, is assigned a mentor etc.
• A stat showing number of unique views from within a mentor organization would also be helpful. This can also be applied for non organization people like Google SOC staff.

As for now I will start working on my project from tomorrow, just like I stated in my detailed plan :).

Here is an excerpt from the official email I got from Google.

Subject: Congratulations!
To: my address at gmail dot com
From: gsoc at google dot com
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:15:43 -0700

Dear Applicant,
Congratulations! This email is being sent to inform you that your application was accepted to take part in the Summer of Code.Please check your student home page in the SoC web application at http://code.google.com/soc/student_home.html to determine which ofyour applications was accepted.
Thanks for taking part we are very excited to see what the Summer will bring!

Congratulations once again,
The Google Summer of Code Program Administration Teamem>

More detailed post to come, URL of application , proposal and some other links.

These are interesting times to be an open source developer. Google Sumer of code enters its third year in 2007 and this time the process has started earlier than previous years. As I am registered as part time certificate course student at Virtual university of Pakistan, I can take part in this competition. I have used open source for around seven years now and have yet to give back some thing solid to the open source community (occasional irc help secessions and little bit of wiki editing is good but not a very big contribution in my opinion). I feel that if I am able to be a part of Google summer of code this year, not only I would be giving back to the community in a structured way, but I would also be learning a lot from seasoned hackers and developers who would be mentoring me.

I am not certain what mentoring organizations are expecting in an application. I don't think the mentors should be expecting the participants to know a lot about their project as the whole point of SOC is to make new people come into open source development. But at the same time if some one has worked with the project in question in the past (s/he may be part of code project team and a student as well), that person would be a better catch. As for me I am applying to the projects which are of technical/intellectual interest to me or solve some important problem that I have encountered.

I will be posting a few apps within next 24 hours. I will try to supplement them with web pages on this site. I hope at least this application process will be a good experience for me to polish my writing skills.