Main GSoD Linux Foundation page: How to apply, deadlines, other workgroups, ...

Important: We protect the e-mail addresses of our mentors and mailing lists against spam bots. Please replace all occurrences of “ at ” and “ dot ” by “@” and “.” resp.

Code License: See project descriptions

The participation of the Linux Foundation in the Google Season of Docs is organized by Till Kamppeter (till at linux dot com) and Aveek Basu (basu dot aveek at gmail dot com).

Prof. Nicholas Mc Guire Lanzhou University, Distributed and Embedded Systems Lab Technical lead in OSADLs SIL2LinuxMP project (which is to some extent being continued in LFs ELISA) - A number of publications including documentation in the Linux kernel and articles in scientific and technical periodicals.

Not subscribed to any IRC channel - but on the ELISA lists. No IRC nick - don't use IRC regularly

Writing platform: LaTeX on anything with more than 32MB of RAM running GNU/Linux Attached is one of the safety manuals used for training as well as for class.

Set yourself up: There is no state for ELISA yet - but as soon as there is I' be building it.The proposed package would though fit into SPDX more than into ELISA (where licensing is actually not even settled yet).

You and Us: Contributions to the Linux kernel and to LFs ELISA project but not to any tech writings (did write some documentation for the Linux kernel e.g. completion API doc, and tech docs for the SIL2LinuxMP project) Some of the SIL2LinuxMP projects will (hopefully) find there way into ELISA - but that is really still at the start so hard to say.The proposal would most likely fit more into the SPDX project though I'm not on that list yet - at OSADL we maintain the Legal FAQs and that has exposed me to a lot of the issues at hand.

Why have you chosen your idea and what do you expect from your implementation?:

License and copyright is a consistent problem in academia - we simply ignore it - so I've been popping in legal basics, license assessment and basic copyright and license text writing for student software packages as part of the programming classes here. This may be worth generalizing and providing a consolidated (and sound - reviewed) set of material that can be incorporated in academic classes so as to build more awareness of license and copyright issues.

Current set (that needs some work and verification) is split int three parts: - basic legal terms and license history (Bern Convention (1887), Article 27 of the declaration of human rights (1948), Free-Software, and OSD) - Risk management of software packages - assessing license and copyright related risks of using a software package - License and attributions - providing proper copyright and licenses in software as well as proper attributions for work of others. This is wrapped up in some basic examples of license, copyright and attributions for python modules and packages.

Your Project What do you want to achieve?: An easy to incorporate - semi-standardized set of slides (1 or 2 classes with exercises (e.g. package assessment) and some exam questions as well as educational reading list).

If you are proposing a project of your own, what is unique about it?:

Not sure if it is unique - its simply something I needed for class and was not able to locate or find with a suitable license so that I could re-use it. If this is the right place to work on this topic I can not say.

What makes you suited to carry the project?: 15 years of teaching and 25 years of involvement in open-source including getting my fingers burnt as maintainer of RTLinux/GPL. A number of technical writings and publications

How much time do you plan to invest in the project before, during and after the Season of Docs (We expect you to give your full participation during the GSoD period, but better make this explicit)?

Please provide a schedule of how this time will be spent on subtasks of the project. While this is only preliminary, you will be required to provide a detailed plan latest at the beginning of GSoD and during the project you will issue weekly progress reports against that plan.

Mentor: Nicholas Mc Guire (der dot herr at hofr dot at)