XBMC, a Google Summer of Code 2008 Project

[Gamester17]

XBMC is participating in this year's Google Summer of Code (GSoC), which means that we are looking for creative college students who are skilled in the C++ programming language and would be interesting in getting paid by Google to work on new features for XBMC this summer.

Google is this year sponsoring its fourth annual Google Summer of Code (GSoC), a program in which Google rewards students with a stipend of up to US$4500 in order for them to get involved and develop open source code for an existing and established open source project, such as XBMC. So if you are interested here is your chance, XBMC is a cross-platform multimedia-player for Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and the original Xbox game console.

The student application period starts on Monday March 24th and closes Monday March 31st, so be sure to hurry to sign-up and submit a project proposal by then, however there's no reason to wait for the application period to start before you get involved, so you can begin now deciding on an idea and discussing it with the team. To take part you are required to perform a small qualification task to make sure that you are prepared for your larger project. There is more information and some ideas for qualification tasks and projects on our wiki article for this years GSoC - see the link below. So get thinking about what you'd like to see in XBMC this summer that you may be able to help out on, and post on our forums about your idea for feedback from the team and the community!

Links:
- The XBMC GSoC 2008 wiki article
- Google Summer of Code sign-up

[Asteron]

Hi Gamester17,
I just wanted to thank you for doing an amazing job on that wiki entry. I am really excited to see what the students come up with

[timdog82001]

Looks great! really thorough job on the wiki! One question looking through the proposed ideas though, don't we already have support for CDG karaoke files??

[bob.smith]

Great news!

Could be the much needed boost the project needs to help with the mammoth porting tasks, and to fix some long standing niggles.

BOB.SMITH

[Gamester17]

Originally Posted by timdog82001

One question looking through the proposed ideas though, don't we already have support for CDG karaoke files??

Yes XBMC does have support for CDG files (and in a SongTitle.mp3 with an accompanying SongTitle.cdg) but there is currently no support for CD+G audio compact disc (also known as CD+Graphics), ...which are where most of those CDG files you can download from the internet are originally ripped from.

In any case, it is only listed there as one idea among many (and if alone a too small task it would be), also note that the students are not limited to those ideas listed in that wiki article, a student can come up with any new feature idea they like or build a other proposal around an existing concept, original or not, in any case they will have to sell the idea as their own, to us and to Google (as the application will have be submit to to and through Google, but preferably after discussion the idea publicly with Team-XBMC and the XBMC community, meaning you guys).

[Gamester17]

What we all as XBMC end-users can do now is try to attract creative C++ programming college students to XBMC and GSoC is talk to any college student or teacher that you know to let them know about GSoC and ask them to spread the word. Word of mouth can be a very powerful influence!

You could also print a pamphlet (or two) and post on the bulletin-board of the computer-department at your local college, ...if so then you should probably let people know of not only XBMc but also about the other GSoC projects as well.

[timdog82001]

good idea about the pamphlets or anouncements. Might be a good idea if somebody were to make something everyone could use and post it for download somewhere, I bet it would greatly increase the likelihood of people actually going out and posting them somewhere. I will look into it if I have time, but that's not likely to be for a while as i'm in the middle of finals right now

[matt777]

Great news. should be good to see what they develop.

[nitrostar]

This sounds awesome!

[Gamester17]

FYI; Student applications are now available. Please see http://code.google.com/soc/2008/ for information on how to submit your application, be sure to apply in time.
http://groups.google.com/group/googl...ent-applicants

Also, due to the almost complete lack of students who have publicly expressed an interest in submitting a proposal for XBMC to this years GSoC we will now also accept performing a qualification task for the FFmpeg project as a XBMC qualification task as well, see here for more information.

PS! Be encouraged by the fact that the qualification review period comes after the application submission deadline; i.e., you can work on a qualification task after you submit an application to XBMC through Google.


Help with spreading the word about Google Summer of Code is wanted!:
http://code.google.com/p/google-summ...iki/GsocFlyers
http://code.google.com/p/google-summ...de/wiki/Videos
http://youtube.com/watch?v=OBUvf2q9vSc