Rhombus Tech's application for GSoC 2012.

Describe your organization

Rhombus Tech has been established to serve Free Software Developers, entrepreneurs, enthusiasts and Engineers with access to affordable, modern and importantly GPL-compliant hardware.

The product family is designed to be open and accessible at all levels, including for Educational purposes, R&D, Engineering and mass-volume appliances. The key is in creating Modular Design concepts and defining Hardware Interface Standards. The first two standards are EOMA-68 and EOMA-CF.

Why is your organization applying to participate in Google Summer of Code 2012? What do you hope to gain by participating?

The primary purpose of the Rhombus Tech Community Interest Company is to fulfil two needs: the first is for China-based Factories to have proper access to GPL-compliant Software and to decent Software Engineers (which they are simply not getting); the second is to give Software (Libre) Engineers access to affordable hardware which is sufficiently documented so that it can be programmed. Right now the situation is extremely bad for both groups: hardware is released that was not designed in consultation with Software (Libre) Developers, using GPL-violating firmware which requires massive amounts of time-wasting reverse-engineering!

With this situation in mind, participation in GSoC is a logical and important step which will accelerate the whole process.

Did your organization participate in past Google Summer of Codes? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation.

no.

If your organization has not previously participated in Google Summer of Code, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?

This is the first time.

What Open Source Initiative approved license(s) does your project use?

GPLv2 primarily.

What is the URL for your Ideas page?

It will be at http://rhombus-tech.net/gsoc2012/ideas/ ideas

What is the main development mailing list for your organization?

http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipermail/arm-netbook/

What is the main IRC channel for your organization?

arm-netbook at irc.freenode.net. ibot logs are kept at http://ibot.rikers.org/%23arm-netbook/

Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now.

It will be at http://rhombus-tech.net/gsoc2012/ideas/

Who will be your backup organization administrator?

bari@onelabs.com

What criteria did you use to select your mentors for this year's program? Please be as specific as possible.

Our mentors are the people who are driving the project. They see not only the value of the Rhombus Tech Strategy but also are actively involved in making it happen.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?

No matter what, the project will be completed.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?

Other mentors will step in. We have several potential mentors. No matter what, the project will be completed.

What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?

We already have students asking about the project. We have a busy and quickly growing IRC channel in FreeNode #arm-netbook

There is also a Community Ideas section of the wiki where they can submit their ideas for both software and hardware.

Are you a new organization who has a Googler or other organization to vouch for you? If so, please list their name(s) here.

No.

Are you an established or larger organization who would like to vouch for a new organization applying this year? If so, please list their name(s) here.

No.