Kamaelia & Summer of Code (was Re: Google's Summer of Code - Students coding on MoinMoin )

[Michael]

Alexander Schremmer wrote:
...
> Just as a sidenote, there are also at least the organisations BBC R&D (
> Kamaelia) and Python Software Foundation (including Python, PyPy, ...)
> which offer work on Python software.

I only just had a chance to check c.l.p.a - thanks for posting the reference
above - it's VERY much appreciated :)

For those interested in Kamaelia for summer of code, please see our main
overview page here:
   * http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/SummerOfCode2006.html

We have a template for applications describing what we're interested in
here:
   * http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/SummerOfCode2006Template.html

The main discussion area for projects is here:
   * http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/projects/blog.cgi

However there's been *a lot* of discussion on IRC over the past few days on
this subject, so looking in the logs might be a good idea:
   * http://koala.ilog.fr/twikiirc/bin/irclogger_logs/kamaelia

We've had a few very good applications so far, but one thing I would like to
say is this:

Please note: For summer of code, we're interested in anyone who can code,
not PhD candidates (they're nice and welcome though :). We're rating
applications based on enthusiasm, approach and project they want to do as
much as we are on people's innate ability. Anyone with sufficient talent OR
determination can produce something wonderful. 

The reason for this note is someone made the comment that they thought we're
interested only in PhD candidates which is unfortunate. Whilst Dirac is
pretty hardcore, Kamaelia is written in python for a very specific reason -
to lower the barrier to entry.  Summer of Code for us is as much about
testing whether that really is the case, as it is about producing useful
tools.

After all, we're serious when we say that Kamaelia /should/ be accessible
even to novice programmers.

Also, Whilst the front page of the website hasn't seen much action recently
it's probably worth mentioning that we've now got significantly better
documentation of individual components, a cookbook of examples, etc.

The best starting point at the moment is probably here:
   * http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/Docs/

If you've got no idea what Kamaelia is, two ways to describe it:
   * Rack mountable software (currently trying this description for size :)
   * Toys for programmers

A way to describe its ethos (paraphrasing Doug McIlroy):
   "Write components that do one thing and do it well.
    Write components to work together.
    Write components to handle object streams, because that is a universal
    interface." 

We're in the final stages of an optimisation phase, so this is a good time
to get involved. The current release will soon be replaced with something
with a lot of new components and greatly improved performance. (when *that*
happens that would be a good time to be a user of the system :)

Anyway, this message is really targetted at people who are interested in
doing something FUN and useful for summer of code :-) (apologies to those
who might view it as spam...)

Have fun!


Michael
--
Michael Sparks, Senior Research Engineer, BBC Research, Technology Group
ms_ at users.sourceforge.net, Kamaelia Project Lead, http://kamaelia.sf.net/
Summer of Code: http://kamaelia.sf.net/SummerOfCode2006.html