Google Code In 2010 ideas

Google Code-In is a program for students 13-18 years old who want to get involved in open source. It's set up very differently from the Summer of Code, where there's just one big project. In GCI, students work on a series of small tasks (perhaps 1-3 days each for a 13-18 year old). Finishing 1 task gets them a T-shirt; 3 gets them $100; and they can get paid more money for up to 15 tasks. These tasks include:


 * Code: Tasks related to writing or refactoring code
 * Documentation: Tasks related to creating/editing documents
 * Outreach: Tasks related to community management and outreach/marketing
 * Quality Assurance: Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is of high quality
 * Research: Tasks related to studying a problem and recommending solutions
 * Training: Tasks related to helping others learn more
 * Translation: Tasks related to localization
 * User Interface: Tasks related to user experience research or user interface design and interaction

Below, please add your ideas in sufficient detail to get a student excited about them and to allow them to get more info from you. The format for ideas is below:

Idea Name
Brief description.

Skills:
 * bash
 * c/c++

Contacts:
 * [mailto:name@gentoo.org Your Name]

= Code =

= Documentation =

Science docs
The Gentoo Science page needs a serious rewrite, with possibly sub herds.

Skills:
 * guidexml
 * english writing

Contacts:
 * [mailto:bicatali@gentoo.org Sebastien Fabbro]

logcheck docs
Gentoo needs more documentation for logcheck, a system log analyzer. We should document how to configure it for different system loggers, how to customize the rules, etc. We should also make sure that following the instructions results in a working setup of logcheck (i.e. that the instructions are complete and accurate).

Skills:
 * GuideXML (a Gentoo documentation format, XML-based)
 * English writing
 * basic Linux system administration

Contacts:
 * [mailto:phajdan.jr@gentoo.org Paweł Hajdan, Jr.]

Desktop-effects docs
With the nuke of Gentoo's wiki some time ago, most of user-submitted desktop-effects documentation is now scattered. We propose students testing of desktop-effects software and writing of related documentation.

Skills:
 * guidexml
 * english writing

Requirements:
 * hardware capable of running desktop-effects (compiz-fusion et all)

Contacts:
 * [mailto:desktop-effects@gentoo.org desktop-effects]

= Outreach =

Gentoo Community Day
In the same spirit of the Gentoo Bugday, we could have a Community Day where users and developers could share experiences, provide support and discuss issues related to Gentoo. The task of the candidate would be to promote discussion about this issue and help organize the event.

Skills:
 * ability to engage with users and developers and promote a spirit of cooperation within the Gentoo Community

Contacts:
 * [mailto:userrel@gentoo.org User Relations]

= Quality Assurance =

Chromium in Gentoo QA
The Chromium in Gentoo project (http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/chromium) needs more people testing the packages.

We have a list of bugs that need more information (in which configurations they reproduce, etc), and also package versions marked for testing.

Skills:
 * ability to file a good, useful bug report, or contribute information to an existing bug report

Contacts:
 * [mailto:phajdan.jr@gentoo.org Paweł Hajdan, Jr.]

Ebuild testing
Gentoo needs more people testing packages (ebuilds) and marking them as stable on various architectures.

Skills:
 * ability to file a good, useful bug report

Contacts:
 * [mailto:phajdan.jr@gentoo.org Paweł Hajdan, Jr.]

= Research =

PAM Comparison
The huge PAM audit, and pambase rewrite, is slowly proceeding, but to know what to provide in the future, we could use comparison with the other distributions out there.

Basically we'd need a (quick-but-not-so-quick) analysis of the PAM situation for the basic services (login, gdm, kdm, sshd, a few daemons) from the other distributions (SuSE – they employ one of the main Linux-PAM devs – Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch).

Skills:
 * basic understanding of the Pluggable Authentication Method interface
 * ability to quickly switch between the various distributions (e.g. with VMs)

Contacts:
 * [mailto:flameeyes@gentoo.org Diego Elio Pettenò]

= Training = = Translation =

Gentoo Docs translation for Portuguese
Currently there's a lack of Portuguese Documentation for the Gentoo Project. The task of the candidate would be to pick some documents under http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/ and work on its translation for Portuguese.

Skills:
 * Native understanding and good writing skills of Portuguese
 * good understanding of English
 * guidexml

Contacts:
 * [mailto:jmbsvicetto@gentoo.org Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto]
 * [mailto:miknix@gentoo.org Angelo Arrifano]

Gentoo Docs translation for Turkish
Currently there's a lack of Turkish Documentation for the Gentoo Project. The only existing translation is an outdated handbook for x86 The task of the candidate would be to pick some documents (or possibly revamp the handbook translation) under http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/ and work on its translation for Turkish.

Skills:
 * Native understanding and good writing skills of Turkish
 * good understanding of English
 * guidexml

Contacts:
 * [mailto:serkan@gentoo.org Serkan Kaba]

= User Interface =