Open Food Facts - Google Summer of Code (GSOC)
Welcome!
Open Food Facts is a non-profit open source and open data project with a massive impact on the food and health of millions of people across the world, and we need your help to make this impact even bigger in many more parts of the world!
Open Food Facts was a participating organization for the Google Summer of Code.
Getting started
If you would like to work on Open Food Facts projects during the Google Summer of Code, make sure to join the Open Food Facts community on Slack, introduce yourself there and get familiar with the project.
A good way to do that is to open your fridge or cupboard to find a food item to scan with our Android or iOS application. Open Food Facts works like Wikipedia. The food product may already be in the database with its data completed. If it’s present, you will get valuable information about its nutritional quality (Nutri-Score) or its level of food processing (NOVA). If it’s not present yet, please take some pictures and add it!
What we're looking for
Please note that there are likely to be more students applying than we will have places allocated by Google, so make sure you make your application is a good one. We are looking for:
- Enthusiasm for Open Food Facts goals and its community
- Good communication skills (as needed for good team work in an open environment)
- Autonomy (more an entrepreneur than a trainee)
- First experience with the tools you will need to complete the project (eg. demonstrated ability in the relevant programming language or environment)
- Information on how you would approach the project, what time you can put into it and what you think you will be able to achieve over the GSoC period
The actual things you will accomplish during the bounding period are the best way to demostrate you meet those criteria.
Why you should candidate
Open Food Facts is, first of all, a community. We try our best to be very welcoming and inclusive.
Food is a very important topic to everybody on the planet and has a major impact on health and environment. We try to inform and help people make better choices everyday.
Open Data is also precious as it enables many re-usages for various use cases (more than 200 other projects use it). It is a precious tool to researchers (500+ citations).
Your contribution to this project will impact a lot of people.
Make some Contributions
We want to make sure that new contributors are familiar with our development workflow and with the tools involved with it. Make at least some documentation and code contribution to an Open Food Facts project (preferably related to the project you want to work on during GSoC) to demonstrate you can build the application from the source code, make changes to it, and submit a merge request in the project's GitHub repository.
We are an Open Source project, and we want things to happen in the open, so prefer public channels to ask questions. On Slack, try to find the right channel to ask questions. Search if your question is not already answered somewhere before asking. The bounding period can be a bit exhausting for mentors, try to help them help you.
It's also an occasion for you to show your abilities to communicate, find answers, explore existing documentation and so on. As said above, contribution is one of the surest mean to prove your adequation to the program required skills.
Decide on a GSoC project
Our mentors will put together a list of project ideas that you can choose from. Project proposals are not strictly limited to the ones listed in this project ideas page. You can contact the main developers or any Open Food Facts project on a public channel, introduce yourself, and suggest your own project ideas. Base any ideas you propose on a small research about the needs of a projects and/or users and make sure there is interest from a mentor before basing your application on it. We do not have extensible forces so we will be forced to choose projects that are in line with project priorities.
Also notice you can submit more than one project, this might be a good idea if you think there are a lot of candidates on one of the project you submitted. As an organization we can't change students project, so if we have two good candidates on same project we can only choose one. By submitting more than one project, you may give us the opportunity to choose you on this second project.
Note we typically have few candidates on Perl projects while this is one of the top priority area for us.
Getting started now tasklist
The following things can help you select a project and prepare your idea:
- Join our chat room
- Read our Tech team guidelines
- Introduce yourself in the #summerofcode channel
- Join the channels related to the language/project/countries you're interested in
- Try to use the application and the website to understand what Open Food Facts is about. Try to read something on the website, the blog and the wiki
- Choose a project idea that you are enthusiastic about
- When you know the project you target, it is important to first familiarize with the software. Try to make it run on your device/machine.
- Read the project's README on the repository, feel free to ask for necessary clarifications
- Lurk on the project's chat channel
- Once you're able to run it, try one of our "good first issues" on GitHub
- Please, go through the available tutorials and direct your questions to the Slack chat, in the most specific channel possible.
- As you learn, it is also a good idea to propose updates to the documentation (especially on arguments you struggled to understand).
- If you have never worked with Git Branching, we encourage you to visit this web: https://learngitbranching.js.org/
Fill out the Application
Once the application period has opened, you have to submit your application on the Google Summer of Code website. Your application must be written in English. It should contain a detailed description of your project proposal.
Copy our Google Document template and make sure you answer all of the questions.
Please be factual and clear in answering these questions. Feel free to add anything else that is relevant to your application. It is never too early to start working on your GSoC application! Note that GSoC positions are very competitive (with about 4 applicants for one position in the past) The key to creating a strong proposal is to propose a manageable and agreed-upon project, make a contribution to the module your proposal is related to, and write an application that clearly demonstrates your knowledge, skills, and enthusiasm.
Some parts of this page have been adapted from the excellent GNOME GSOC page