GSoC Interest

[Mark Schneider]

Dear Openmoko Community,

On Monday, I saw that the Openmoko mentoring application was accepted
by the Google Summer of Code program.  I am considering applying as a
student for the 2008 Google Summer of Code to work on the Openmoko
project.  I have read over the mailing lists and looked at the wiki
page for GSoC [1], and feel that I would make a good candidate for
working on some of the projects.  The question I would like to throw
out there, is which project does the community think is most
desirable, and that someone would be willing to mentor me on?

First, I would like to formally introduce myself and tell you a little
bit about my background.  My name is Mark Schneider and I live in
Iowa, USA.  I have been interested in the project for some time now,
and was finally able to save up enough money to buy a Neo1973 this
past winter.  I have been using desktop Linux for about 7 years, and
embedded (Denx [2], not OpenEmbedded) Linux and U-Boot for 2 years.  I
have a BS in Computer Engineering from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison and am currently attending Iowa State University
pursuing my masters.  I have worked in embedded field for 2 years,
which is where I have gained most of my experience with embedded Linux
and U-Boot on the PPC platform.  I would like to leverage my past
experience and current schooling to help the Openmoko platform
stabilize.

Since most of my experience is in hardware and low level software
(device drivers and kernel hacking), I think my skills would be best
used there, however, I would not be apposed to working in higher level
middleware.

Initially, I had wanted to write an open source device driver for the
GPS device in the Neo1973 that would provide a standard NMEA output
which gpsd could interpret.  However, I see that the Freerunner will
be getting a new GPS device, so this may no longer be necessary.

Other ideas that I saw on the GSoC wiki page that I thought might be
of interest:
Ad hoc communication via Bluetooth/WLAN
Cooperative Differential GPS
Accelerometer Gestures

My willingness to work on the project is not conditional on whether my
application gets accepted.  I would like to work regardless of Google
supporting me.

If there are any other projects that you think would be good, please
let me know.  I would like to discuss this more before I submit my
application.  Email works well, or you can occasionally find me on
#openmoko under the handle 'queueRAM'.

Regards,
Mark Schneider

[1] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2008
[2] http://www.denx.de/wiki/DULG/ELDK