[Mifos-developer] Call for Mentors: 2021 Google Summer of Code for the Mifos Initiative

[Ed Cable]

Hello all, 

It's that time of year again and the Mifos Initiative is looking to participate in Google Summer of code for the 10th year. Last year, we had our largest class of interns ever with 17 interns and we look to build upon that growth but can only do so if we have a dedicated group of mentors who are sincere, active, and understand the commitment it takes. 

This year we'll once again be having interns work on our Mifos X web and mobile apps, Fineract 1.x and Fineract CN, as well as more projects around our AI for All strategy, our Payment Hub EE and payments integration, our Open Banking layer, and for the first time projects related to OpenG2P. 

Google Summer of Code applications are due February 19. I am finalizing our application but need to ensure we have a committed group of mentors and a solid ideas list. I have already been discussing ideas with our past GSOC mentors and recent GSOC alum who will becoming mentors for the first time.

We'll be adding our mentors and refining our ideas list at: https://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/spaces/RES/pages/2267381810/Google+Summer+of+Code+2021+Ideas

GSOC 2021 Details (GOOGLE MADE SOME MAJOR CHANGES TO THE PROGRAM THIS YEAR) 

The coding program officially runs from June 7 to August 16, 2021.

This year in order to increase the reach of GSOC and encourage longer term participation, projects are of a much smaller scale  - 175 hour projects spread across 10 weeks vs 350 hour project spread across 12 weeks.  This reflects the recognition that with COVID, students won't have GSOC as their only commitment so we have to narrow the scope of our ideas down to fit into the reduced time commitment cycle and remove our expectation that they have no other commitments outside of school. Stipends for students have also been reduced by half. See Stephanie's email for full details and rationale behind these major changes they're testing out in 2021. 

2020 was our biggest year of participation in GSOC to date with 17 interns mentored by the Mifos Initiative. We once again tested the limits of our mentors so I want to emphasize this year that if you express interest in being a mentor, know the commitment it takes.  Despite the reduced scope of the projects, it will still take the same level of effort in mentoring the student, scoping and managing the project, etc. so we'll see how these new changes impact our community and long-term retention of contributors. 

Mifos participation is in addition to whatever participation Apache Fineract might do as part of the umbrella organization, Apache Software Foundation. 

Developers!

This program is one of our most impactful ways to extend our software but most importantly grow our community over the long run. Our most active volunteers, committers, and maintainers in the community have all been former GSOC students so if you're a senior community member looking for a great way to give back, this is it!

I gave a talk a couple years back  that explains how GSOC is truly the lifeblood and organic growth engine for our community - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtxBX7Sbqv0

In case you forgot, here's a link to blogs about past GSOC programs at: https://mifos.org/blog/tag/gsoc/

If interested please fill out this form and/or reply to this email thread. If you know someone who would be a good mentor, don't hesitate to invite them.

We will later schedule a developer meeting to solidify our list of ideas and answer any questions you might have about mentoring!

Partners & Users!

Regarding our list of Ideas, this year we'll both revisit some of the ideas that weren't picked up last year, continue evolving the apps that students have worked on in the past and try to do more projects on Apache Fineract CN, the Gen 3 architecture, our Open Banking APIs, and OpenG2P. 

As we did last year, the majority of ideas we'll submit for our application will be related to Mifos X distribution powered by Apache Fineract 1.0 including web app (Community App), mobile apps (field officer, mobile banking, mobile wallet ), and other modules (data import tool, etc.) powered by Apache Fineract as well as our payment integration tools including payment hub and mobile money integrations.

You can start adding ideas to our very early stage 2021 ideas page at

https://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/spaces/RES/pages/2267381810/Google+Summer+of+Code+2021+Ideas

That page is still to be updated for current ideas.

We especially need more functional use cases of what the mobile apps should support - if you would like to see new innovation and more development - this is your chance to have your feedback be heard!

--

Ed Cable

President/CEO, Mifos Initiative

edc...@mifos.org | Skype: edcable | Mobile: +1.484.477.8649

Collectively Creating a World of 3 Billion Maries | http://mifos.org  

CHANGES TO 2021 GSOC PROGRAM

Hello GSoC Mentors and Org Admins,

We are pleased to announce Google Summer of Code 2021, the 17th consecutive year of the program!

As many of you might have heard if you attended the Mentor Summit a couple of weeks ago (or chatted with someone who did) we are making a few changes for the 2021 program. We’ve spent a lot of time evaluating the GSoC program and have been looking at where we can make some changes to help meet the #1 goal of GSoC - bring new, diverse contributors into your communities that stay in your communities after their GSoC program ends. And with the challenges of the pandemic and the strains it has put on everyone’s time (students, mentors and org admins alike) we are looking to provide more flexibility in 2021.

What are the changes for 2021 from 2020?

1. Smaller project size - all students participating in the 2021 program will be working on a 175 hour project (instead of a 350 hr project). This change will also result in a few other changes including the student stipend being cut in half. 

• Currently we are missing out on many wonderful students who could never commit to such a huge project and time commitment but would be great contributors to your community. This is a significant change as we now are no longer strongly encouraging students to focus only on GSoC over their summer. Students have many other responsibilities especially during the pandemic that make it hard for them to spend 30 hours a week on a project. 
• We realize this is going to require all of you to think about smaller projects and update your project ideas which is why we wanted to give you 3+ months to start talking it through with your communities.
• The mentor stipends will be adjusted to $400 per student mentored. In feedback from the mentor summit it was pointed out that the effort from mentors will not be half as much even though the project size is cut in half so we adjusted from $250 to $400.

1. Shortened coding period - the coding period will be 10 weeks with a lot more flexibility for the mentor and student to decide together how they want to spread the work out over the summer. Some folks may choose to stick to a 17-18 hour a week schedule with their students, others may factor in a couple of breaks during the program (for student and mentor) and some may have students focus 30 hours a week on their project so they wrap up in 6 weeks. This also makes it a lot easier for students with finals or other commitments (weddings, etc.) to adjust their schedules.

2. 2 evaluations  (instead of 3) - There will be an evaluation after 5 weeks and the final evaluation will take place after the 10th week. We are also no longer requiring students complete their first evaluation (though we encourage them to do so), so if a student doesn’t complete the first evaluation they will not automatically be removed from the program. They are still required to complete the final evaluation.

3. Eligibility requirements - In 2020 there are many ways students are learning and we want to acknowledge that so we will be allowing students who are 18 years old AND currently enrolled (or accepted into) a post-secondary academic program as of May 17, 2021 or have graduated from a post-secondary academic program between December 1, 2020 and May 17, 2021 to apply to the GSoC program.

• What this means is that now the program will be open to folks participating in a variety of different academic programs, not just accredited university programs. This includes licensed coding camps, community colleges, and many other programs that may not be accredited yet but are post-secondary academic programs. 

These changes were made to help find more diverse students who we hope will stay involved in your communities after their GSoC ends. We look forward to these changes and will definitely be getting feedback from all of you as the 2021 program goes on to see what is working and what we should consider adjusting for any possible future program. 

The program announcement, timeline, marketing materials (slide deck, flyers), FAQs, and short videos with tips for mentors and students are all available. You'll also notice the 2020 program has now been archived.

Organizations -- If you would like to apply for the 2021 program please start thinking about the ~175 hr projects you would like students to work on and also reach out to your community members to ask if they would like to be mentors for the program. Having a thorough and well thought out list of Project Ideas is the most important part of your application. 

Encourage other open source orgs to apply -- Please also consider encouraging other open source projects to apply and be a first time GSoC org - we’re hoping to accept more orgs in 2021 than ever before with a good number of them being first time orgs. When orgs apply they can put your org down as a reference.

Please note that Org applications will open on January 29th. 

We are looking forward to another exciting year of GSoC!

For any questions about the programs please email us at gsoc-s...@google.com

Best,

Stephanie Taylor

GSoC Program Lead

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[Frans Jacobs]

Hello all,

I recently received a message from AWS that they will force me ( and
everybody else running mifos on AWS ) to upgrade the MySQL to version
5.7 or 8 before august 2021.

Did anyone else receive this message from AWS?

I think this will affect many other users of Mifos on AWS as well so it
will have to be fixed.

Any help or advice on how to approach this is much appreciated..

Regards, Frans ( running mifos v. 18.03 )




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[Frans Jacobs]

Thanks you for the quick response Alberto. I am going to study this.

You mentioned dump from version 5.7.. but I need to dump from version 5.6. Do yo happen to know if that is possible as well?

regards, Frans

On 17-2-2021 01:10, Jose Alberto Hernandez Maldonado wrote:

Hello All!

One option without too much effort is to use TiDB (Titan Database https://docs.pingcap.com/tidb/stable). It is NewSQL database, high performance and can be used with containers. 

The advantage on this, the TiDB connector is based in MySQL and you can create a MySQL dump from version 5.7 and restore it in TiDB without problem.

Talking about Finercat code, as we said the TiDB connector is based in MySQL, so no code changes need it.

Thanks and best regards

Alberto

El 16/02/2021 3:49 PM Frans Jacobs <fr...@worldtracks.com> escribió:

Hello all,

I recently received a message from AWS that they will force me ( and

everybody else running mifos on AWS ) to upgrade the MySQL to version

5.7 or 8 before august 2021.

Did anyone else receive this message from AWS?

I think this will affect many other users of Mifos on AWS as well so it

will have to be fixed.

Any help or advice on how to approach this is much appreciated..

Regards, Frans ( running mifos v. 18.03 )

_______________________________________________

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Met vriendelijke groet,
Frans Jacobs

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[Francis Guchie]

Dear All,

IMHO, i would not encourage anyone to use a database other than what has been recommended on the forums for a number of reasons

1.  Being able to restore from a mySQL database dump into TiDB is not the only reason you should rely on
2. Throughout the source code, there are table-joins, mySQL keywords used and a combination of sql scripts that could result into errors

A simple example is https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26246413/how-many-max-join-table-at-mysql-and-how-to-count-it#:~:text=MySQL%20has%20a%20limit%20of%2061%20tables%20in%20a%20join.  Where it is mentioned that MySQL has a limit of 61 tables that can be called in a join sql Script

Another example is MySQL 5.7 came with a new condition only_full_group_by which installs as a default.   read this ===> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FINERACT-1054 

 In My view,  unless a good number of users have used that particular database engine, i would encourage all of us to stick to the tested database engines (tested in real life Production)

My Kind Regards

Francis Guchie Kirago

Skype: francisguchie

Telegram: 232 79 19 44 07

Whatsapp: 232 79 19 44 07

LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francis-guchie-kirago-a4379617/

twitter: @FrancisGuchie

Mifos-developer mailing list

[Frans Jacobs]

Hello Francis,

Thanks for the reply.

" i would encourage all of us to stick to the tested database engines (tested in real life Production)"

Thats exactly what I prefer.. Either upgrade to 5.7 or 8.  However what I understand since I started using mifos 18.03 I cannot upgrade the mysql version higher then 5.6.  But AWS now forces me to do that. So how do I solve this problem?

What elements (mifos, fineract, mysql) do i need to upgrade/update (if possible) to support a higher version of mysql?

Am I the only one having this problem? I would think there are more Mifos users on AWS who are presented with this dilemma.

Thanks again and like to keep the discussion going to find a solution.

Regards,

Frans

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[Ed Cable]

Hello all, 

It's that time of year again and the Mifos Initiative is looking to participate in Google Summer of Code once more. While unfortunately last year Mifos Initiative was not selected due to the need to let in new orgs to the program, I'm optimistic we can get selected this year. Last year, we still were able to play a role in helping guide the five interns that were selected under the Apache Software Foundation but when we participate directly through Mifos it allows us to target a larger class across a wider variety of projects.

This year we'd be having interns work on our Mifos X web and mobile apps, Fineract 1.x and Fineract CN, as well as more projects around our AI for All strategy, our Payment Hub EE and payments integration, our Open Banking layer, and for the first time projects related to OpenG2P. 

Google Summer of Code applications are due February 21. I will refine our application but need to ensure we have a committed group of mentors and a solid ideas list. I have already been discussing ideas with our past GSOC mentors and recent GSOC alum who will become mentors for the first time.

We'll be adding our mentors and refining our ideas list at: https://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/spaces/RES/pages/3004891137/Google+Summer+of+Code+2022+Ideas

I will schedule a community-wide Zoom meeting to have a discussion on potential ideas and answer questions of prospective mentors 

Once again as in 2021, there are some major exciting changes to the 2022 GSOC program - the three major changes are listed below (with full details at the bottom of the email):

(1) Starting in 2022, the program will be open to all newcomers of open source that are 18 years and older, no longer focusing solely on university students.

(2) GSoC Contributors will be able to choose from multiple size projects ~175 hour (medium) and 350 hour (large).

(3) Google is building increased flexibility around the timing of projects - there is an option to extend the standard 12 week coding time frame to a maximum of 22 weeks

The coding program officially begins June 13 and for the standard duration projects ends September 12 and for the extended duration projects November 13.  

2020 was our biggest year of participation in GSOC to date with 17 interns mentored by the Mifos Initiative. That high number of interns tested the limits of our mentors so I want to emphasize this year that if you express interest in being a mentor, know the commitment it takes. We will be very deliberate in our selection of projects this year to ensure we have proper mentor capacity given with last year's smaller class it was more manageable and in the end a better overall experience with more attention for each intern.  

Mifos participation is in addition to whatever participation Apache Fineract might do as part of the umbrella organization, Apache Software Foundation. 

Developers!

This program is one of our most impactful ways to extend our software but most importantly grow our community over the long run. Our most active volunteers, committers, and maintainers in the community have all been former GSOC students so if you're a senior community member looking for a great way to give back, this is it!

I gave a talk a couple years back  that explains how GSOC is truly the lifeblood and organic growth engine for our community - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtxBX7Sbqv0

In case you forgot, here's a link to blogs about past GSOC programs at: https://mifos.org/blog/tag/gsoc/

If interested please fill out this form and/or reply to this email thread. If you know someone who would be a good mentor, don't hesitate to invite them.

Partners & Users!

Regarding our list of Ideas, this year we'll both revisit some of the ideas that weren't picked up last year, continue evolving the apps that students have worked on in the past and try to do more projects on Fineract 1.x and its ongoing modularization, the Payment Hub and payment orchestration, streamlining design and development of our mobile apps, our Open Banking APIs, and OpenG2P. 

As we did last year, the majority of ideas we'll submit for our application will be related to Mifos X distribution powered by Apache Fineract 1.0 including web app (Community App), mobile apps (field officer, mobile banking, mobile wallet ), and other modules (data import tool, etc.) powered by Apache Fineract as well as our payment integration tools including payment hub and mobile money integrations.

You can start adding ideas to our very early stage 2022 ideas page at https://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/spaces/RES/pages/3004891137/Google+Summer+of+Code+2022+Ideas

That page is still to be updated for current ideas.

We especially need more functional use cases of what the mobile apps should support - if you would like to see new innovation and more development - this is your chance to have your feedback be heard!

--

Ed Cable

President/CEO, Mifos Initiative

edc...@mifos.org | Skype: edcable | Mobile: +1.484.477.8649

Collectively Creating a World of 3 Billion Maries | http://mifos.org  

CHANGES TO 2022 GSOC PROGRAM

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: 'sttaylor' via Google Summer of Code Mentors List <google-summer-of-...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wed, Nov 10, 2021 at 1:10 PM
Subject: [GSoC Mentors] GSoC 2022 Updates and Details for Mentors and Org Admins
To: Google Summer of Code Mentors List <google-summer-of-...@googlegroups.com>

Hi Mentors and Org Admins,

Google Summer of Code is starting an exciting new chapter with multiple updates to the program in 2022. The open source ecosystem has evolved since GSoC’s first program in 2005 and we’re adjusting the program to meet the needs of our communities.

We discussed these changes in depth at the virtual Mentor Summit last week and wanted to give you the highlights as well as some of the finer details. This email is long, so I apologize in advance.

(1) Starting in 2022, the program will be open to all newcomers of open source that are 18 years and older, no longer focusing solely on university students. With folks around the world changing careers, returning to the workforce, learning on their own (outside of academic programs) we see an opportunity to reach a plethora of excited individuals who want to learn more about open source and be a part of our amazing GSoC communities.

With this change we needed a new way to address the participants who are not students so we came up with the term “GSoC Contributors” as it is more welcoming than participants. We are trying to use the full term “GSoC Contributor” so they aren’t confused in a general conversation about contributors already in your community. 

For orgs this still means you will be focused on bringing new contributors into your organization, this is not a way for your org to pay a current great contributor. You want to welcome new contributors, that is the true spirit of GSoC.

Why make this change now, after 17 years? In our previous 3 in-person mentor summits (2017-2019) we asked the question ‘who is your ideal GSoC contributor?’ a) students b) developers a little further into their careers than students (you aren’t teaching them version control, testing protocols, etc. because they are already familiar) or c) you are happy bringing excited new contributors into your community and their level of experience doesn’t necessarily matter to your org. And all 3 years the mentors were equally divided ⅓,⅓ and ⅓.  We believe this is an opportunity to bring many more new contributors into your community that are excited to learn more about open source and will hopefully stay long after their GSoC program ends.

Explicitly stating requirements. If your org really enjoys mentoring students or wants a person with more general coding experience who can dive right into your codebase, you can choose to just focus on that particular group of GSoC Contributors. However you must be explicit and communicate this in every possible place to be fair to applicants who are looking into your org and want to write a proposal. You should state your strong preference in your instructions/requirements for proposals on your GSoC org homepage, under project ideas list or at any place where applicants will be looking before they dive into writing proposals. Organizations are encouraged to state experience level expected (beginner, intermediate, etc.) along with difficulty of the project (easy, medium, challenging).

(2) GSoC Contributors will be able to choose from multiple size projects ~175 hour (medium) and 350 hour (large). We understand not everyone can spend 30 hours a week on a coding project for 12 weeks but they would like to be a part of these communities with the help of mentors. 

We know many mentors were concerned when we added the concept of 175hr projects for this year, and while it worked out great for many orgs, some orgs were not happy with the change and said their projects were very involved and need the bigger, 350 hour projects for the contributor to be able to get anything really accomplished. So for 2022 we will have both sizes of projects.

We strongly encourage orgs to have both size projects available in their project ideas lists and in their slot allocation requests. If your org really liked the 175 hr project size and just wants to have those available, that is fine. Keep in mind that when we are allocating slots, if your org is only asking for large projects and you are used to getting 5 or 6 slots you may only get 3 or 4 slots. 

We know coming up with projects that are a certain time requirement can be tricky, but we trust you all. And if you realize that what you thought would be a 175 hr project is really more like a 275+ hr project, the mentor can work with the GSoC contributor to adjust the scope during the summer. This is what y’all have been doing for years and re-scoping is fine as long as you and the GSoC contributor are doing it together. You will not be able to switch a project to a larger project from a medium sized project once slots have been assigned.

The stipend amounts for GSoC Contributors will be in the same general range as the last couple of years with the medium size 175 hr projects being half the dollar amount of the 350 hr projects. The org stipend will be $500 per GSoC Contributor regardless of whether it’s a medium or large project.

(3) We are building increased flexibility around the timing of projects - there is an option to extend the standard 12 week coding time frame to a maximum of 22 weeks.  This option is to allow for folks who may realize that spreading the work over say, 16 weeks, is a more realistic goal with their current life situation. Or for contributors who have life happen in the middle of the program and they can’t work on their projects for a few weeks, but they can come back to it after a month to finish it. Mentors and GSoC Contributors can work together to decide at the proposal stage if they want to lengthen a project to something longer than the 12 weeks or the extension can happen during the coding period itself. Ultimately the Org Admin will be the one making the end date adjustment for each GSoC Contributor project on their dashboard so they have the final say on when they want all projects completed in their org.

Hopefully this makes it easier for GSoC Contributors and mentors to be able to navigate together when obstacles occur and the GSoC Contributor can still successfully complete their project just in a bit longer time frame than they (and their mentor) may have planned on.

General Program Flow

The general program flow will continue to be the same up to the coding period, and then depending on the length of the student’s project (12 week, 15 week, etc.) their evaluation deadlines may vary. With the new webapp we are building, it will be very clear what your next action item is - this is especially important for org admins as they could have many projects spread out with different deadlines. We are very focused on making the webapp easy to use. : )

We encourage you to explore our resources (including flyers and slide decks), the Contributor/Student Guide (fully updated with the changes) and Mentor Guides (not updated yet, though only minor changes needed in there). You can also view (and share!) our announcement blog post. You can always check out our archive for previous successful projects by year.

The timeline for 2022 will be announced late this year on our upcoming new program site.

We hope you are excited about these changes. 

Feel free to reach out to us at gsoc-s...@google.com with any specific questions or concerns. 

Best,

Stephanie and Saranya

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[Ed Cable]

Hi all,

I have spoken to many of you directly already and we are finalizing our ideas list as our GSOC application is due tomorrow. I want to do one last reminder for any potential mentors to share their interest in mentoring

by filling out this form at https://forms.gle/sFsYKdk4DtnvWmFM9

Ed

[Ed Cable]

For those mentors that are inputting their ideas, the mentor guide has some really good tips around framing a project appropriately: https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/defining-a-project-ideas-list

I will categorize some of our projects like suggested below. We will also categorize between easy, medium, hard.

Low-hanging fruit: These projects require minimal familiarity with the codebase and basic technical knowledge. They are relatively short, with clear goals.

Risky/Exploratory: These projects push the scope boundaries of your development effort. They might require expertise in an area not covered by your current development team. They might take advantage of a new technology. There is a reasonable chance that the project might be less successful, but the potential rewards make it worth the attempt.

Fun/Peripheral: These projects might not be related to the current core development focus, but create new innovations and new perspective for your project.

Core development: These projects derive from the ongoing work from the core of your development team. The list of features and bugs is never-ending, and help is always welcome.

Infrastructure/Automation: These projects are the code that your organization uses to get its development work done; for example, projects that improve the automation of releases, regression tests and automated builds. This is a category in which a GSoC contributor can be really helpful, doing work that the development team has been putting off while they focus on core development.

The projects you propose will define the tone and scope of your organization’s participation in GSoC. It is a key part of your organization’s application. Further, it may be the first impression made on a potential applicant.

[David Asem]

Hi Ed,

I went through the Idealist for GSoC 2022 and found only one AI-related project which is the Fineract Chatbot.

Would more AI projects be added? Because I'm interested in working on one of those for GSoC 2022.

Happy to learn more.

Regards,

David Asem

[Ed Cable]

The ideas list hasn't been updated but we are certainly going to have an idea related to the machine learning credit scorecards, the chatbot, potentially vision PPI, and our other mentor exploring potential other projects.

Ed

[David Asem]

This sounds great! Thank you Ed!

Looking forward to them.

[Ed Cable]

Hello Mifos & Fineract communities,

It's that time of year again and the Mifos Initiative is looking to participate in Google Summer of Code once more. This would be our eleventh year of participation. Our application has been submitted and we're in the process of refining our ideas list in case we do get selected. If we are selected to participate this year, I want to be deeply cognizant of having a committed set of mentors and backup mentors who will be available for the duration of the program to mentor their students in an engaged fashion. 

Last year, despite having a smaller number of projects than normal (just ten) we struggled to provide the ideal mentoring experience for our interns and some of our mentors had to take on extra capacity to guide their interns. GSOC still represents a great way to attract highly talented individuals and begin to pass the torch onto the next generation of contributors so it's a great way for our more seasoned community members to participate and give back. 

We already have a strong set of mentors who have expressed their interest and their commitment to mentor this year but we're still seeking more so we can have redundancy and ensure we deliver our interns the enriching experience and professional and personal growth they deserve. 

While Apache Software Foundation is applying separately, under the umbrella of the Mifos Initiative, we will focus on our suite of Mifos mobile and web apps for staff and customers but also target projects for Fineract 1.x with a primary focus on peripheral innovation on the edge or making progress on ongoing refactoring, code stability, security improvements, testing coverage growth, etc around the back-end. While we haven't refined the ideas significantly, we will also target work on the Payment Hub, our AI for All strategy, additional modules on top of Fineract, Open Banking and 3PPI APIs and G2P related efforts like OpenG2P.

With the project ideas we'll be targeting and focusing on, we'll aim for those on the back-end and Fineract to not impact core development or put overall quality of the platform at risk.  

We'll hear back on the status of our application by Feb 22 and if accepted, interns can begin applying March 20.  

We'll be adding our mentors and refining our ideas list at:  https://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/spaces/RES/pages/3296690177/Google+Summer+of+Code+2023+Ideas

If you have any questions please contact me or or other org admins @Rahul Goel and @Sanyam Goel 

To express interest in mentoring, please fill the form out at https://forms.gle/7X5c138tDJnmKTzC9

If you have ideas you'd like to list, please reach out to me or the other org admins and we'll help get them added to the wiki page.  

Later on, I will schedule a community-wide Zoom meeting to have a discussion on potential ideas and answer questions of prospective mentors 

Most of the changes that took place in 2022 have carried over to the 2023 program. These major changes are listed below. 

(1) Starting in 2022, the program will be open to all newcomers of open source that are 18 years and older, no longer focusing solely on university students.

(2) GSoC Contributors will be able to choose from multiple size projects ~175 hour (medium) and 350 hour (large).

(3) Google is building increased flexibility around the timing of projects - there is an option to extend the standard 12 week coding time frame to a maximum of 22 weeks

More on the 2023 program can be found at https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/resources/downloads/GSoC2023Presentation.pdf

The program starts slightly earlier this year with the coding program officially beginning May 29 and for the standard duration projects ending on August 8 and for the extended duration projects November 6.   

[James Dailey]

Ed -  Let’s please keep this clear and separated.  

Mifos is a non profit that can bring GSOC volunteers onboard to its separate projects.  

Mifos UI enhancements 

Mifos PaymentHUB

Projects that sit “on top off” Fineract (Machine learning , apps for loan origination scoring)

All of those belong w Mifos and only should be discussed here at Fineract if there are backend changes that possibly would be needed.  Jira tickets, complete tests for any of those backend dependencies.  

At fineract, if we have a dedicated mentor who is a member of the PMC, we can perhaps work on a GSOC project under Apache.  However that mentor must naturally apply the highest level of quality assurance before such contributions can come into a Release branch.  I’m calling this out because 100% of our production users have - UNTIL NOW worked on forked versions (where they correct issues on private repos). 

A helpful approach would be to create a kind of “GSOC- experimental branch“ that can be used as a demo and source of ideas.  

Then our Dev Branch and our Release Branch will remain stable and maintainable.  

This allows us to stick with our previously committed Roadmap, quality processes, and potentially bring on new devs, who, over time can become a contributor.  

Agreed?  

--

Sent from Gmail Mobile

[Ed Cable]

Hello Mifos community, 

It's that time of year again and the Mifos Initiative is looking to participate in Google Summer of Code once more. We have already confirmed our participation in this year's Code For GovTech program.

This would be our thirteenth year of participation in GSOC . Org applications for GSOC don't open till Jan 27 and aren't due till Feb 11 but we want to get a headstart by ensuring we have a deep list of committed mentors as well as a strong list of projects and ideas as part of our application.

To express interest in mentoring, please fill the form out at https://forms.gle/7X5c138tDJnmKTzC9

If you have ideas you'd like to list, please fill out this form at https://forms.gle/HrpWFyuvneXfjser8 

If we are accepted I want to be deeply cognizant of having a committed set of mentors and backup mentors who will be available for the duration of the program to mentor their students in an engaged fashion. Last year we had a couple of mentors take on a large burden and that makes it a challenge to provide the ideal mentoring experience for our interns. GSOC still represents a great way to attract highly talented individuals and begin to pass the torch onto the next generation of contributors so it's a great way for our more seasoned community members to participate and give back. 

We have mentors carrying over from last year who have expressed their interest and their commitment to mentor this year but we're still seeking more so we can have redundancy and ensure we deliver our interns the enriching experience and professional and personal growth they deserve. 

Under the umbrella of the Mifos Initiative, we will focus on our Mifos X core banking distribution and ancillary integrations and modules, our mobile and web apps for staff and customers, Mifos Gazelle, Payment Hub EE, Security, AI-related projects, as well DPG integrations.  

We'll hear back on the status of our application by Feb 27 and if accepted, interns can begin applying March 24.  

We'll be adding our mentors and refining our ideas list at: https://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/spaces/RES/pages/4271669249/Google+Summer+of+Code+2025+Ideas 

If you have any questions please contact me or or other org admins @David Higgins and @Rahul Goel 

Later on, we will schedule a community-wide Zoom meeting to have a discussion on potential ideas and answer questions of prospective mentors 

The changes that took place in 2022 have carried over to the current version of the program. These major changes are listed below. 

(1) Starting in 2022, the program will be open to all newcomers of open source that are 18 years and older, no longer focusing solely on university students.

(2) GSoC Contributors will be able to choose from multiple size projects ~90 hours (small) ~175 hours (medium) and 350 hours (large).

(3) Google is building increased flexibility around the timing of projects - there is an option to extend the standard 12 week coding time frame to a maximum of 22 weeks

More on the 2025 program can be found at https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/resources including resources to promote GSOC at your local university 

Thanks,

Ed Cable & David Higgins