Hi,
Its time for Google Summer of Code '08. Many of you are already following it. But just a reminder and a friendly poke incase you forgot all about it.
Of course, KDE will be there like previous years. Check [1] for more details.
As a student, all you need is some enthusiasm, willingness to contribute to KDE and Free Software in general. Knowledge of C++ is almost taken for granted in KDE GSoC. Knowledge of Qt/KDE/PyQt framework and programming is a definite ( huge ) plus. If you are already a contributing code to some KDE application, firstly you r0ck, nextly you did yourself a huge favour and have HUGE PLUS-PLUS :). It also works if you have been sending in patches regularly. So if you are one of them, DO submit a proposal.
There is a nice *idea* page on the KDE techbase page [2]. Feel free to browse through that and find something that you like or you might be able to pull off. *Strong recommendation* - Please be creative and write your own project proposal. Nothing impresses mentors more than your own enthusiasm to do something uber cool for the project. It is million times better if you write your own project proposal - may be even your own idea that is not there in the idea page which you think might be a cool feature / addition to KDE - instead of copying something from the idea page. Its a idea page after all and not a proposal template page ;). Please read [3] about certain instructions of participations in KDE GSoC. I repeat, please read [3] before applying. It is very detailed and will mostly answer a lot of your questions and will help you frame your proposal in much better way.
Last year KDE GSoC participation [4] [5] was really wonderful. It got 40 projects sanctioned by Google which probably was the largest allocation among all the participating projects. There were 213 proposals submitted to Google and 40 were allocated. 3 of those 40 students were Indians, you have ask them about their experiences. I am very sure that they have good things to talk about the same. Since I have met Piyush and Sharan many times in recent past after the SoC '07, I know for sure that they ( and Anirrudh, the third guy ) loved the whole experience and had a blast.
Looking forward to your proposal. Good luck.
[1]http://code.google.com/soc/2008/kde/about.html [2]http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Projects/Summer_of_Code/2008/Ideas [3]http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Projects/Summer_of_Code/2008/Partici... [4]http://dot.kde.org/1176336589/ [5]http://code.google.com/soc/2007/kde/about.html
Cheers!
Pradeepto