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ABOUT

Fedora is participating in the Outreachy round running from May 23 to August 23, and with the application deadline on March 22.

Outreachy is an internship program for people from group underrepresented in free and open source software, including women internationally and underrepresented people of color in the U.S. Our goal is to increase participation in Fedora. Please see the main page with program details for the general information, such as timeline, background information, eligibility, requirements, and the application form.

Schedule

  • March 22: - application deadline
  • April 22: - selection decisions are made
  • May 23 - August 23: - internships

FOR PARTICIPANTS

About Fedora

Fedora is a Linux-based free software operating system. You can use Fedora in addition to, or instead of, other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows™ or Mac OS X™. The Fedora operating system is completely free of cost for you to enjoy and share.

The Fedora Project is the name of a worldwide community of people who love, use, and build free software. We want to lead in the creation and spread of free code and content by working together as a community. Fedora is sponsored by Red Hat, the world's most trusted provider of open source technology. Red Hat invests in Fedora to encourage collaboration and incubate innovative new free software technologies.

We believe in the value of free software, and fight to protect and promote solutions anyone can use and redistribute. Not only is the Fedora operating system made from free software, but we use free software exclusively to provide it to you. The website you are reading this on right now, in fact, is made from free software and serves millions of people every month.

We also believe in the power of collaboration. Our contributors work with free software project teams around the world we call "upstream." They create much of the software found in Fedora. We collaborate closely with them so everyone can benefit from our work, and get access to improvements as soon as possible. By working in the same direction as these project teams, we can ensure that free software works better together, and provides the best experience for users. We also can include improvements quickly, which helps not only users, but the upstream as well.

Contact Information

If you have Fedora-specific questions at any point during the application process, you are welcome to email them to women-outreach@lists.fedoraproject.org or ask them on the #fedora-outreachy IRC channel on irc.freenode.org . It's easy to connect to IRC, and you can learn all about the use of IRC in Fedora and the different applications you can use to connect. The information about project-specific IRC channels and mentors' IRC nicks and e-mails is available in the list of Fedora projects and mentors below.

Choose a Project

Take a look at the list of various Fedora projects and the mentors listed for them below.

You will need to decide which project or projects you are most interested in working on and make the required small contribution to it with the help of a mentor. The following things can help you with your decision:

  • Read the project's wiki page on the Fedora wiki or on its Fedora Hosted project page.
  • Lurk on the project's IRC channel
  • Especially if you are applying for a software development internship, build the code for the project and run it to check out its latest capabilities (the wiki usually has the instructions for doing this, but don't hesitate twice to ask the project's mentor or people on IRC for help if you encounter any problems)
  • Look at the open bugs for the project in Bugzilla under the 'Fedora' product.
  • Look at the recent changes in the project's Git repository
  • Read the recent discussion on the project's mailing list.
  • Read the blogs of the project's mentor and other project contributors (you can learn who they are when looking at the Git repository). Many Fedora project contributor blogs are aggregated at Planet Fedora.
  • Introduce yourself to the project's mentor and discuss what your tasks during the internship program would be

Feel free to let us know if you would like to work on a project that is not listed on the projects page and we will try to find a possible mentor for that project.

MENTORS AND PROJECTS

Here is a list of some nice folks in Fedora who can help you make your first contribution as part of the Outreachy.

Once you decide what project you are interested in contributing to and explore the information available on that project's wiki:

  • You can introduce yourself to the project's mentor and ask them any questions you have about contributing to the project.
  • The mentor can help you identify an easy task to take on, introduce you to how work gets done in the project (for example, for design projects, they will introduce you to Inkscape), or guide you with development tasks such as building the project's code, identify an easy bug to start with, and help you with your patch for that bug.
  • The mentor can guide you through your subsequent contributions and point to the resources for solving particular issues.

If you are interested in finding a mentor for a project not listed here, you can look at the project's commit log to see who are its most frequent contributors and try to find them on IRC. You can also ask on the #fedora-outreachy IRC channel.

Communicating via IRC

You can find the information about communication about the projects below and on the project pages they have listed there:

  • The link next to the project name is the name of the project's IRC channel on irc.freenode.org.
  • The string next to each mentor's name in parentheses (like this) is their IRC nick.

You can learn more about the use of IRC for Fedora development and how to install an IRC client here on Fedora's IRC HowTo page. You can find out other contact information and more about each mentor on their individual pages.

Typically, there are other people on the project's IRC channel who can help you, too. Please ask your questions in the channel, and please don't ask your questions in private message unless it's really necessary for privacy reasons. You can address the mentor directly in the channel by using their nick in your question. E.g. if the mentor's IRC nick is kelly, you can say "kelly: hi! I just built project-foo and looking for a bug to fix - I found bug 123 and bug 321 in the project's bugzilla that both look like something I can try to work on, but I wanted to see if you have any recommendation, since you are listed as a mentor for the project"

Mentors, please read the information for mentors before adding yourself and your project to this page.

Project List

Community Operations Projects

Project IRC Channel Web Page Mentor(s) Notes
Community Operations (CommOps) #fedora-commops CommOps Wiki Remy DeCausemaker (decause) The rise of DevOps has been swift. Sysadmins are increasingly instrumenting and integrating automated systems to stand up and maintain their infrastructure. This same approach can be taken to support community infrastructure in a distributed and automated fashion, that doesn't force people to choose between using their precious volunteer time to "build things" or "build communities that build things." The community operations team works across numerous technologies, and interest areas in Fedora, including Messaging, Storytelling, Fedora Badges, Fedora Hubs, Wiki, Culture, Metrics, Voting, and other miscellaneous topics. It is important to note that CommOps team members are generalists, and the strengths and interests of individual applicants will determine the precise nature of your work. Technical skill, though desirable, is not the primary selection criteria. Enthusiasm for FOSS culture and community organization, and effective communication skills are most important. Your internship with this project could involve any or all of the following:
  • Web testing and bug reporting / triaging
  • Content development and syndication
  • Writing for the web and print
  • Collaboration with Fedora Council and Leadership on Project Objectives and Initiatives
  • Volunteer Coordination and Organizing
  • Campaign development and implementation
  • Advocacy and Messaging

Required:

  • Effective Communication Skills; written and verbal, synchronous and asynchronous.
  • Passion for Free/Open Source Software and Free Culture
  • Self-directed and Curious nature
  • Experience writing for the web (Content only is ok, HTML/CSS even better)
  • Experience publishing and/or syndicating content via Social Media
  • Experience working in teams, or community organizing

Bonus Skills:

  • Basic multimedia development skills
  • Web development/design skills
  • Sysadmin/Devops skills
  • programming/scripting skills


Development Projects

Project IRC Channel Web Page Mentor(s) Notes
Fedora Infrastructure Web Application Development: Fedora Hubs #fedora-hubs

Fedora has been in the process of creating a new web presence for all of the Fedora users, subprojects, and communities. We also plan to integrate some of the features of this system with the prototype of the Fedora Developer Portal, which is targeted at helping general developers use Fedora. While the Hubs project itself is aimed at Fedora contributor circles, the reusable features will allow the Portal to use this work to speak to general developers who may not have an interest in working in the Fedora community, but want to connect with community members for advice, best practices, or to generate interest in their upstream project.

Several of the principal app developers in the Fedora Engineering team will be working together with you on this project during the Outreachy term. You'll participate directly with team members daily on core features of Hubs as well as integration with the Portal. This is a great opportunity both for regular mentorship and for being deeply involved in an exciting and fast-moving project with the Fedora team.

Working on this project could involve any of the following:

  • Adding new features to the web frontend
  • Adding new capabilities to the backend
  • Writing and deploying new widgets
  • Triaging and processing new widget ideas submitted by the community at large.
  • Implementing existing (and thoroughly detailed) mockups from previous UI/UX interns and team members.

Skills:

  • HTML/Javascript/CSS
  • Basic Python a plus
  • Bonus: Experience with Bootstrap, jinja templates, Fedmsg, datanommer/grepper, or other fedora infrastructure projects a HUGE plus.

When applying to this project, it may be useful to review the designers' blogs about the projects' design here:

Fedora Developer Portal

Fedora Hubs

A video overview of the Hubs project is available here: http://blog.linuxgrrl.com/2015/07/01/fedora-hubs-update/

Fedora Kernel Tooling Project #fedora-kernel Kernel wiki Laura Abbott (labbott)

The kernel is a key component of the Fedora distribution. The packaging and tooling surrounding it has grown organically and could use a lot of cleanup. This project will involve improving the packaging and scripts associated with the kernel to make it more manageable. This internship does not require any knowledge of kernel internals beforehand. You will get a solid background in how the kernel is built and how RPM packaging works.

Sample tasks

  • Adding additional scripts to the scripts directory to automate tasks
  • Reworking how kernel options are selected
  • Adding new functionality to the kernel spec file

Skills:

  • Basic Linux command line skills
  • git (can add file, make a commit, apply a patch)
  • Shell scripting
  • basic regular expressions
  • Bonus: experience building kernels, make, packaging rpms, python

Application instructions

FOR MENTORS

Please read the information for mentors and add your project and yourself as a mentor to the list of mentors for various Fedora projects in the table above.

Please e-mail women-outreach@lists.fedoraproject.org if you have any questions about participating in the program as a mentor and to ask to be added to that mailing lists, which are private to the program's coordinators and mentors. Laura Abbott and Remy DeCausemaker are the co-coordinators for the program in Fedora in this round.

FOR ORGANIZATIONS AND COMPANIES

Please see the information for organizations and companies on the main Outreachy page. We would love to have more organizations join the program and more companies sponsor internships with open source projects and other related organizations.

As a company, you are welcome to specify the project you would like to sponsor and have your employee be a mentor for the project. We will take care of finding the best applicant!

Please feel free to contact Karen Sandler and Marina Zhurakhinskaya with any questions.

DISCLAIMER

This program and all offers related to it are void where prohibited or restricted by law or where operation of the program would violate any law or right. All participants in the program must agree to the terms and conditions of the program which will be provided to the selected applicants.