Summer of Code

This is a page devoted to Maxima project proposals which might or might not be funded by Google's Summer of Code program.

For a wish-list which has already accumulated, see Design Notes.

Update 2007/03/19. Maxima was rejected from Google SOC 2007. We'll try again next year.

Update 2007/03/12. I (Robert Dodier) have submitted an application for Maxima (content as shown below, with minor modifications).

Update 2007/03/03. Google SOC 2007 is accepting applications from mentoring organizations March 5--12. Let's write our application here. Here are the application questions, copied verbatim from http://code.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=60303&topic=10727.

Update 2006/04/25. Maxima was rejected from the Summer of Code list of mentoring organizations. We'll try again next year. In the meantime keep up the good work and if you have ideas please direct them to Design Notes. (There were a few ideas here, I moved them to Design Notes.)

1. Describe your organization.

   • Maxima is an open source computer algebra system, comparable in basic functionality to Maple or Mathematica. Maxima is an active project on Sourceforge, with about 20 active developers and about 100 cvs commits per month.

2. Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2007? What do you hope to gain by participating?

   • We hope to implement some long-standing items from our wish list.

3. Did your organization participate in GSoC 2005 or 2006? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and failures of your student projects.

   • No.

4. If your organization has not previously participated in GSoC, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?

   • We applied to GSoC 2006 and 2007 but we were rejected.

5. Who will your organization administrator be? Please include Google Account information.

   • Robert Dodier, robert.dodier@gmail.com

6. What license does your project use?

   • GNU General Public License.

7. What is the URL for your ideas page?

   • http://maxima.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Design%20Notes

8. What is the main development mailing list for your organization?

   • maxima@math.utexas.edu, must be subscribed to post, subscription page http://maxima.sourceforge.net/maximalist.html

9. What is the main IRC channel for your organization?

   • irc.freenode.net port 6667 channel #maxima (gets little traffic at present)
10. Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now.

 Application Template

 1. Describe your level of experience using the Lisp language.

 2. Describe your mathematical background: Have you taken college-level
 calculus and/or linear algebra, where and with what grades?  What
 other math courses have you taken, and what if any non-classroom
 background do you have in math?

 3. Have you used maxima before?  How much and for what purposes?

 4. Why are you interested in this project?

1. Who will be your backup organization administrator? Please include Google Account information.

   • Daniel Gildea

2. Who will your mentors be? Please include Google Account Information.

   • Robert Dodier
   • Alasdair McAndrew
   • Raymond Toy
   • Daniel Gildea

3. What criteria did you use to select these individuals as mentors? Please be as specific as possible.

   • Mentors have significant development experience in the Maxima project, and have expressed interest in helping add specific functionality to Maxima.

4. What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?

   • We plan to ask students for (at least) weekly status reports each Friday, and contact any students who do not file a report. We will report a disappearance to Google and put their project back on the to-do list.

5. What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?

   • We will report the disappearance to Google and another mentor will take over.

6. What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?

   • We will tell them to subscribe to the Maxima mailing list and actively read and post messages.

7. What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes?

   • We will make them regular developers if they so desire.