Fossed

2006.05.25

The last few weeks have been incredible, for the FOSS community at large, and personally to me as well. First, there was the FOSS-Ed for Hackers conference, where I had a wonderful time (and where Anuradha W presented me with a hard-bound copy of Free Software, Free Society, thanks mate!). And then, a couple of days ago I got confirmation from Google that I was accepted for the Summer of Code 2006. Awesomeness.

My mentoring organization is Irssi, and I’ll be redesigning their website. It’s wonderful to see a hacker-friendly project paying close attention to the aesthetics, usability and the accessibility of their website, so much so that they thought it’s worthy of a Google SoC internship. Infact, the existing site is already a lot better than those of many FOSS projects, so the redesign would be an interesting challenge.

Another thing I admire about Irssi is the “accessibility” of the core team. Being a small community helps, but it was apparent that they were as enthusiastic on discussing and commenting on the proposal as I was on preparing and submitting it, which was not the case for a couple of other projects that I contacted before the application process. I ended up applying only to Irssi, and glad I did so. Besides, my mentor rocks.

In the coming weeks I’ll be blogging about the Irssi redesign, and hopefully give an insight in to how design decisions are being made in the open source collaborative model. Hopefully I’ll be able to get the input of my very knowledgeable readers as well :-)

Permanent Link | Filed under: Design, Life, Web, FOSS, Sri Lanka, Thoughts

12 Comments

Comments Feed

  1. Mahangu

    May 26th, 2006 at 8:18 am

    An awesome week for FOSS indeed. Congratulations on SoC, it must be amazing to be working with such an established project. I mean, irssi has been around, well.. forever. :) It’s certainly a tool that I use everyday.

    Can’t wait to see what you make of the site.

  2. Asela

    May 26th, 2006 at 8:37 am

    I got confirmation from Google that I was accepted for the Summer of Code 2006.

    that’s awsome mate. Congratulations! :)

  3. Lakshan

    May 26th, 2006 at 9:30 am

    Congrats Mate !

    Hope you will have lot of fun (err….mentoring) with your mentor.

  4. drac

    May 26th, 2006 at 2:45 pm

    congratulations, Prabhath.. I’m thrilled that someone I know got in and is going to get a chance to make a difference in an open source project (and get paid for it !)

    I’m going to look forward to your posts on the irssi redesign with a lot of interest.

    also, MBP! MBP! MBP! (heh. couldn’t resist slipping that one in)

  5. Dulan

    May 26th, 2006 at 9:44 pm

    U DA MAN!!!

    Congratulations, machan!

  6. Prabhath

    May 26th, 2006 at 10:03 pm

    Thanks guys.

    MBP! MBP! MBP! :P

  7. Kishore

    May 29th, 2006 at 7:02 pm

    Great news. Congrats! Which means you are enrolled as a student somewhere?

  8. Prabhath

    May 30th, 2006 at 9:28 am

    Kishore: Yes, an undergrad at UoM.

  9. anuradhaW

    May 30th, 2006 at 10:54 am

    Hey Congratulations on SoM! That’s great news!

  10. anuradhaW

    May 30th, 2006 at 10:59 am

    Ahem. SoC, even.

  11. chamira

    May 31st, 2006 at 9:50 pm

    Wonderful news.
    Like everyone l am looking forward to your posts on this.

  12. Chickenbutt

    July 23rd, 2006 at 9:36 pm

    Hey! how is the SOC work going? Hope you’re having loads of fun and do we see you with a new Macbook Pro? :)