Google Highly Open Participation Contest & the PSF
For the past few days I’ve been one of several people helping Titus Brown set up the Python Software Foundation’s portion of the Google Highly Open Participation(TM) contest. GHOP is an extension of Google’s Summer of Code project, for students not yet in college. The goal of the contest is to attract young people to open source, and teach them how to participate. Check out the FAQ for more details.
The contest is structured around “tasks” specified by several participating projects and covering areas like documentation, outreach, coding, testing, and training. The GHOP home page has a list of the projects, and all of the details for the PSF tasks are in the wiki in our Google Code project: google-highly-open-participation-psf.
How You Can Participate
Each group has a limited number of tasks to contribute to the overall contest, and while we’ve posted several tasks already, each group also left space open for suggestions from the wider community (this is and open source project, after all!). If you have ideas for Python-related tasks, check out the guidelines for instructions on submitting them.
We need community participation!
Speaking of which: Many of the contestants will be new to open source in general, and most probably won’t have experience in the participating projects. They’re going to need help from patient mentors to solve the tasks set before them. If you have time, and the inclination, join the ghop-python google group and watch for questions you can answer. Also keep an eye out for them on comp.lang.python or other forums where they may be going for assistance.
This is a really exciting project, and I’m looking forward to watching how things unfold over the next couple of months. It sounds a little cliched, but these kids are the next generation of open source developers. This is a great way to introduce them to open source and pass on the traditions of cooperation and teamwork that form the basis of the thriving community we have today.