Development / Summer of Code / Application Template

IMPORTANT NOTES:

1. Do not contact potential mentors privately. Not via email, nor via private messages. Your application for GSoC needs to be done in public.
2. You must tell us what you wish to do! Please do not appear in our IRC channel and expect us to tell you what to do. You need to find the inspiration for your project and create a proposal from your own ideas. We will not tell you what to do. This is a test to see if you can think for yourself!
3. Start early! If you are starting to work on your application during the second week of the application process, you've already missed your opportunity to apply. We require very detailed proposals and we insist that you work with our community to improve your application. You cannot do this in the last week and then hope to be accepted -- there isn't enough time. Please don't waste your time and ours!

When filling out your application, please copy the rest of this page into your application and fill out as much information as you can. The Google software doesn't really give us a lot of space for a template, so we've had to pare it down to a minimum which is below:

We require very detailed proposals and we insist that you work with our community to improve your application. Tell us everything about your proposed project. Include diagrams to help us understand your proposal. If you propose anything that requires a database schema you need to show us the proposed schema. The same applies to UI changes/additions -- we need to see mock-ups. If you provide no mock-ups, schemas or supporting diagrams, you won't be accepted.

Nickname:
IRC nick/Matrix handle:
Email:

Please add any public profiles (GitHub, Bluesky, Mastodon, Twitter/X…) that you think we might find interesting. Have you contributed to other Open Source projects or created projects on your own? If so, which projects and can we see some of your code? Do you plan to have a job or study during the summer in conjunction with Summer of Code?

Tell us more about your proposed project. Where can we find any diagrams or other things that will help us understand your proposal better? If you propose anything that requires a database schema you need to show us the proposed schema. The same applies to UI changes and additions -- we need to see mock-ups.

As part of applying for SoC we require that you take your idea and write a post for our MetaBrainz community site with the tag gsoc-applications so that we can help you review your idea before you dive deep into writing your application.

Please propose the idea and then respond to any questions that may arise. Improve your proposal based on the feedback you receive from the community. If you cannot get the community to support your idea your chances for getting your proposal accepted are very slim. If you fail to get community feedback for your project idea, we will not accept your project!

Finally, in order to have your GSoC application be accepted by MetaBrainz you MUST interact with your potential mentor and submit at least one bug fix or new feature that is related to your proposal.

This is also an important part of your proposal. We want to see a week-by-week detailed breakdown of your project, estimating how you will spend the available time. Organize your work starting with minimal functionality and testing, then following with more advanced features. Don't forget to account for the evaluations along the way.

What type of music do you listen to? (please list a series of MBIDs as examples) If applying for a BookBrainz project: what type of books do you read? (Please list a series of BBIDs as examples. (And feel free to also list music you listen to!))

What aspects of MusicBrainz/ListenBrainz/BookBrainz/Picard interest you the most?

Have you ever used MusicBrainz Picard to tag your files or used any of our projects in the past?

When did you first start programming?

Have you contributed to other open source projects? If so, which projects and can we see some of your code?

If you have not contributed to open source projects, do you have other code we can look at?

What sorts of programming projects have you done on your own time?

What computer(s) do you have available for working on your SoC project?

How much time do you have available per week, and how would you plan to use it? Please note that you're not allowed to have a job or be attending university while working on Summer of Code. It always ends badly for everyone and if we find out that you have another job or university courses that impair your project, we're likely to fail you.