Applying for a GSoC project is all about early involvement and commitment2 min read

This year, Pitivi‘s focus for GSoC projects will be a little bit different than in 2013. As you can see in our preliminary GSoC ideas page on the wiki, there is much less GStreamer (or GES) work involved, as we tried to focus on Pitivi UI work — easier, concrete projects, mostly only in Python. Most of the hardcore backend work we needed to accomplish was done throughout 2013. Of course, there are still some hardcore project ideas around if you feel like you’re up for a challenge.

Anyway, the list of ideas is just that: a list of ideas. We’re more than happy for you to come up with your own ideas (thinking outside the box is a positive trait, feel free to impress us).

More importantly, here’s how our approach differs this year:

• We changed the application “procedure” (see the “How to apply and get started” section on the ideas page). Essentially, “discuss your ideas with us” has become step #3 instead of step #1. The first steps are now get your build working, test and use the application, figure out what you love and hate about it, and then start contributing some fixes immediately. This came out of the realization that this is what we actually tell everybody who shows up on IRC asking “I don’t know what to get started with as a contribution”: get the dev version, use it, then you’ll certainly see things you want to improve to get your feet wet.
• Like one of the maintainers of Inkscape once said, I will not believe anything you write in your GSoC application*. Your formal application is only 10% of the equation. We will base ourselves 90% on your involvement and demonstrated ability to contribute code to Pitivi. The more good-quality patches you’ve made, the more chances you have. As such, we expect you to start getting involved in February (March at the latest). If you only start hanging around by the time GSoC application period starts, you will need to work very hard to convince us that you have what it takes.

*: this mailing list link was originally located at SourceForge (archive link)