The deadline for applications is coming up. I’m glad I was able to apply for two really nice projects. Some people applied to 5 or 6, but I hopefully my applications were better quality than theirs. Plus I did a lot of research on both, and I’m confident that I can accomplish them.
The first one is from the GNOME foundation. The goal is to create a wiki-style web-application for documentation of libraries. Since I’m constantly hearing piman complain about GNOME’s lack of documentation I thought this bounty would be very important. My main selling point was being able to import and export documentation easily. Specifically ouputing in a diff format. An extra feature I was proposing was adding a notes/comments/examples page for each function and type. Some API feedback like that would be valuble information for future versions of the library.
The second project I applied to was to create a better system for searching and installing packages for Ubuntu. There are two parts to this project. The first I envision is something like a cross between Gnomefiles.org and Linspire’s Click-n-Run Warehouse. This would be very cool because I think Synaptic is too hard for most newbies. It’ll make Linux a possibility for a lot of people. The second is a program that runs whenever an unknown file-type is encountered. That program will connect to the internet and, using the same mechanism as the first, downloads and installs the appropriate software. What I like most about this project is how we are harnessing the full potential of Free software distribution. We can acheive a level of integration that proprietary operating systems never can.
Of the two projects I have to say I’m more interested in the second one, but the second one’s deadline is August 11th. That’s really pushing it. Waiting for a reply is going to suck.
