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Open Source Work Programs: Project Lead Guide

Creative Commons (CC) participates in open source work programs such as Google Summer of Code (GSoC) and Outreachy. Both CC team members and community members are welcome to lead projects. Details about specific programs and rounds are listed in the Overview page; this page serves as a general project lead guide.

Considerinng Being a Project Lead?

Leading a project is a serious commitment but a very rewarding experience. If you're trying to decide whether to be a project lead, please read the following documents:

If you'd like to be a project lead but don't have a specific project in mind, email the CC Developers mailing list and let us know what your skillset and availability is. We'll see if we have a project you can help out with. If you'd like to propose a project, read on.

Proposing a Project

If you'd like to propose a project for a contributor to work on, please use the following template and send your idea to the CC Developers mailing list. Someone from CC staff will get back to you about whether it is a viable project and next steps for moving it forward.

[Project Title]

Please note that project ideas should be related to an existing CC open source project or website and should be clearly scoped out. They should be doable in three months by a contributor with very little prior experience.

Application Period

Once the initial application period opens, things get chaotic for a little bit as hundreds of applicants investigate various open source communities to try and contribute to them and find a good fit for a work program. There are a lot of emails, Slack messages, GitHub comments, and so on. This stage of the program is the most intense and lasts about a month (although the first few days are the most overwhelming).

Some tips:

Draft Application

You should encourage applicants to share drafts of the application with you ahead of time. Using a Google Doc with comment permissions enabled is probably the easiest way to achieve collaboration. Focus on making sure that their understanding of the project, the project plan, timeline, and deliverables match what you had in mind and is feasible (keeping in mind that they may be new to all this and may not get things done as quickly).

Work Program Period

Preparing

Before the work program period begins:

Post-Announcement

Once the selected contributors have been announced:

During the Work Program

During the work program: