GSOC Questions

Describe your organization.

RIOT is a real-time operating system for embedded systems designed to power the Things in the Internet of Things (IoT). The long term goal of the project is to simplify the programming of constrained IoT devices by introducing a standard development environment for these devices - similar to Linux on PCs and Android/iOS on mobile devices. RIOT enables any programmer with some knowledge of C and Linux system programming to develop applications on IoT devices with zero learning curve. For this it can be programmed in ANSI C or C++, it support true multi-threading, is real-time capable and energy efficient, while still keeping a low memory footprint.

RIOT is a community driven open source project with more than 40 contributors from all over the world. We put great emphasis on transparent processes and open development. The development is build around github and the RIOT mailing lists, where we actively encourage everyone to get involved!

Why is your organization applying to participate in Google Summer of Code 2014? What do you hope to gain by participating?

As RIOT is still a young project, we want our community to grow - because only then are our long term goals archievable. We believe that the GSOC 2015 is a perfect way to attract some of the best students from all over the world. By offering them to get involved with state-of-the-art IoT technology we hope to not only provide them with a lively experience while the project lasts, but to draw their long-term interest in the project.

Has your organization participated in past Google Summer of Codes?

No.

Have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?

No.

What Open Source Initiative approved license(s) does your project use?

LGPLv2.

What is the URL for your Ideas list?

https://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT/wiki/GSOC-Idea-List

What is the main development mailing list for your organization?

http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel

What is the main IRC channel for your organization?

#riot-os at irc.freenode.net: irc://irc.freenode.net/#riot-os

Who will be your backup organization administrator?

Hauke Petersen hauke.petersen@fu-berlin.de

How many potential mentors do you have for this year's program? What criteria did you use to select them?*

All of our potential mentors are chosen among the most active developers in the RIOT community. All candidates have several years of experience working in various software projects with open source, academic, and industry backgrounds. Additionally do all them have experience with mentoring students.

Depending on the projects that are chosen, we will chose the final mentors based on their technical expertise to ensure the best possible support to the participating students. We believe that this way we can speed up the introductionary phase for participating students ant that we can make them fastly 'feel at home' in the community - leading to great overall experience.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?*

We learned from previous experiences that one cannot entirely avoid disappearing students. However, we can take steps to minimize the number of students lagging behind in terms of technical and social skills - a very important factor to maintain student involvement and decrease failure rate.

All the potential mentors have extensive experience dealing with students. They educated, trained, and supervised students, or still doing this, in several software projects such as programming labs and software competitions.

The goal of the project is to be as inclusive as possible from day one: we want our students to become real members of the community, with ongoing, visible contributions on GitHub etc. In our experience, such an inclusive approach encourages students. In order to further decrease the risk of student drop out, we will put in place a rhythm where bi-weekly update/meetings are expected between mentors and students to continuously discuss progress and next steps. We'll also ask our students to provide means for us to get in touch beyond email, where possible - Skype, IM, phone, etc. - in case we need to get in touch urgently.

We believe it is very important to leverage the spirit of joint work, so that people do not feel "alone", in particular when tasks are getting very challenging. We will encourage students to interact not only with their mentor but also among each other using common social media and communication platforms (we mainly use GitHub, and IRC). All students will get introduced to each other before they start coding.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?*

We provide a "backup mentor" for each project that briefly monitors the mentoring process and can jump in quickly if needed. The admin (Oliver Hahm, who is part of the RIOT steering committee as well) will also ensure that the mentors are indeed keeping track of what their students are up to.

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

We use GitHub, and one advantage of this platform is that the current activity of the RIOT community (a relatively 'young' community) on this platform is clearly visible and may thus be attractive for students. This attraction should lead students to start interacting with the community even before the GSOC program, and certainly during the program. We also use IRC, which should also help the inclusive process and the sense of real-time interaction that can be quite motivating.

In order to bootstrap the process, we have also designed an application template that asks for a sketch of approach, work plan, for the project that is applied for (see https://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT/wiki/GSOC-2014-Application-for-a-RIOT-Project ). This requirement should also encourage applicants to involve with the community before the program.

We hope we can make students feel that they're an important part of our community; be open for creative contributions and make them realize that their contributions are really making a difference towards the goals of RIOT. We will make sure they understand how important community building is for the ongoing health of this type of open source project, and they are welcome to continue to contribute to the RIOT community even after the GSOC 2014 is over.

Are you a new organization who has a Googler or other organization to vouch for you? If so, please list their name(s) here.

The veteran organization ns3 (http://www.nsnam.org) vouches for RIOT.

What will you do to encourage your accepted students to stick with the project after Google Summer of Code concludes?*

Many of the projects we propose are explicitly the first phases of longer terms projects that the students may choose to contribute to after GSOC is over. This in itself should be a motivation for students to continue to contribute outside of the context of GSOC 2014. We will encourage them to consider this not just as a mere "summer job", but as first steps in an actual developer community that is ready to welcome them. We will highlight that doing something that is not only interesting for them personally but also useful for others. Moreover, the procedure to contribute to RIOT is designed to be as transparent and inclusive as possible.