GSoC 2021 - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

Greetings -hackers,

Google Summer of Code is back for 2021!  They have changed some of how
GSoC is going to work for this year, for a variety of reasons, so please
be sure to read this email and posts linked for the updates if you're
interested!

Everyone interested in suggesting projects or mentoring should review
the blog post here regarding the changes:

https://opensource.googleblog.com/2020/10/google-summer-of-code-2021-is-bringing.html

Now is the time to work on getting together a set of projects we'd
like to have GSoC students work on over the summer.  Similar to last
year, we need to have a good set of projects for students to choose from
in advance of the deadline for mentoring organizations.

HOWEVER, as noted in the blog post above, project length expectations
have changed.  Projects for GSoC 2021 are to be 175-hours and be run
over a 10-week period.  This is a reduction from 30 hours per week to
only 18 hours per week, with the coding part being only 10 weeks instead
of 12.  With this, there will also only be two evaluation periods
instead of three.

GSoC timeline: https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline

One other thing to note is that "bootcamp" enrolled students will be
eligible in 2021 in addition to university students, broadening the pool
of potential applicants.

The deadline for Mentoring organizations to apply is: February 19.

The list of accepted organization will be published around March 9

Unsurprisingly, we'll need to have an Ideas page again, so I've gone
ahead and created one (copying last year's):

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/GSoC_2021

Google discusses what makes a good "Ideas" list here:

https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/defining-a-project-ideas-list.html

All the entries are marked with '2020' to indicate they were pulled from
last year.  If the project from last year is still relevant, please
update it to be '2021' and make sure to update all of the information
(in particular, make sure to list yourself as a mentor and remove the
other mentors, as appropriate).  Please also be sure to update the
project's scope to be appropriate for the reduced time that's being
asked of students this year.

New entries are certainly welcome and encouraged, just be sure to note
them as '2021' when you add it.

Projects from last year which were worked on but have significant
follow-on work to be completed are absolutely welcome as well- simply
update the description appropriately and mark it as being for '2021'.

When we get closer to actually submitting our application, I'll clean
out the '2020' entries that didn't get any updates.  Also- if there are
any projects that are no longer appropriate (maybe they were completed,
for example and no longer need work), please feel free to remove them.
I took a whack at that myself but it's entirely possible I missed some
updates where a GSoC project was completed independently of GSoC (and
if I removed any that shouldn't have been- feel free to add them back
by copying from the 2020 page).

As a reminder, each idea on the page should be in the format that the
other entries are in and should include:

- Project title/one-line description
- Brief, 2-5 sentence, description of the project (remember, these are
  10-week projects with only 18 hours per week this year)
- Description of programming skills needed and estimation of the
  difficulty level
- List of potential mentors
- Expected Outcomes

As with last year, please consider PostgreSQL to be an "Umbrella"
project and that anything which would be considered "PostgreSQL Family"
per the News/Announce policy [1] is likely to be acceptable as a
PostgreSQL GSoC project.

In other words, if you're a contributor or developer on WAL-G, barman,
pgBackRest, the PostgreSQL website (pgweb), the PgEU/PgUS website code
(pgeu-system), pgAdmin4, pgbouncer, pldebugger, the PG RPMs (pgrpms),
the JDBC driver, the ODBC driver, or any of the many other PG Family
projects, please feel free to add a project for consideration!  If we
get quite a few, we can organize the page further based on which
project or maybe what skills are needed or similar.

Let's have another great year of GSoC with PostgreSQL!

Thanks!

Stephen

[1]: https://www.postgresql.org/about/policies/news-and-events/