GSOC 2012/Student Application amitksaha

Contact Information

 * Name: Amit Saha
 * Email Address: amitksaha@fedoraproject.org
 * Blog URL: http://echorand.me/category/fedora/
 * Freenode IRC Nick: amitksaha

Why do you want to work with the Fedora Project?
My second stint as a Fedora user started about an year back, and liked it much more than I had about 10 years ago when I first started using Linux. I was nursing the idea of a custom Linux distribution for scientific and numerical computing for quite some time. I started exploring the options of creating this spin based on Fedora, and the Fedora project's easy and transparent way to propose a custom spin attracted me. In no time I had the Scientific Spin's process rolling. The Scientific Spin was released along with Fedora 16, thanks to the welcoming and co-operative nature of the Spins SIG, release engineering and the Fedora design and websites team.

This first involvement and my growing understanding of the Fedora community makes it a first choice for me for GSoC 2012. Needless to say, my involvement won't start or cease with GSoC.

Past involvement with Fedora Project:


 * Creator and Maintainer of the Fedora Scientific Spin


 * Mailing list moderator of the SciTech SIG


 * Packager (Review awaited)

Past involvement with other Open Source projects:


 * NetBeans IDE


 * Miscellaneous

Did you participate with the past GSoC programs, if so which years, which organizations?
Not yet

Why should we choose you over the other applicants?
There are a few things which should definitely give me a head-start over other applicants


 * My experience of creating and maintaining the Fedora Scientific Spin


 * My experience packaging for Fedora


 * Existing experience with the toolchain (creating/building Fedora live CDs, kickstart files, installers) desired for the proposed GSoC 2012 project


 * Possession of Generic toolset knowledge - community and mailing list interaction, version control system and programming knowhow - Shell scripting, Python scrpting and working with the Fedora tools such as Koji, Pungi, Lorax, etc.


 * Documentation is important. My articles have appered in Linux Journal, Linux For You, Linux Gazette and elsewhere. So, I actually like documentation.