Hi all,
Google has made the final selections for their Summer of Code and sent out the notifications. The following four applications were selected for Inkscape:
Topic Applicant ------------------------------------------- Connectors - Michael Wybrow Inkboard - David Yip OCAL Interface - Greg Steffensen DXF Import/Export - Matthew Squires
Of course, I was really hoping we could have a few more, because there were several other extremely good proposals for Connectors, Cairoification, libpdf from Scribus, a Genetics Algorithm based tracer, and much more. You can imagine how much discussion and debate that the reviewers have had this past week; it's been a very tough decision process. However, these four projects will provide Inkscape with some new strengths and new capabilities for our users.
The prioritization process that the reviewers used in evaluating the applications weighed a number of factors to reach their decisions, including: The quality of the application, the background of the applicant and their familiarity with the subject matter, the importance of the feature to Inkscape, whether the effort would result in something of tangible benefit in the time available, and whether we felt the applicant had a strong likelihood of completing the effort successfully.
Regarding mentors, we've not yet finalized on who will mentor which efforts, but there are several developers who have expressed interest in mentoring or whom I think would make good fits to the topics. Simarilius and I will be contacting these people over the next day or two and finalize the arrangements. In the meantime, Sim and I can field questions.
Greg, Michael, David, and Matthew, I would also like to encourage you to post your proposals publically for the rest of the Inkscape community to see; they're quite good. :-) You're welcome to use the Inkscape wiki if you do not have a website of your own. In any case, please post your links on this page:
http://www.inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Googles_Summer_Of_Code
If you're interested, a few folks are setting up software for you to use for blogging about your work as well.
Also, if you're not already, please join the inkscape-devel@ list; we use that list for darn near all our technical discussion.
Thanks, and welcome aboard! Bryce