India gained freedom 60 years ago. To commemorate this event, Sun has launched the “Code for Freedom” contest. This is open to all graduate/undergraduate studets in India. The contest will run for 6 months (upto Feb 08).
The prizes include
- Sun Workstations/Laptops for the grand prize.
- iPods Shuffles for significant contributors.
- USB sticks for early bird prizes.
- T-shirts for each valid submission.
- Sun hardware for university with the most worthwhile contribution.
You can choose to do your project in any of the following technologies depending on your interest:
| Technology | Type of project | Interests |
| OpenSolaris | Work on solving bugs here. Solve as many as possible. Try to take on an easy one first and then try to move up the complexity. | C/C++, Operating system, Unix |
| Project GlassFish |
Improve Project GlassFish by submitting bug reports, bug fixes, enhancement requests, code, documents and localizations. Click on the left link for more details |
Java, Servlets, Client-Server model. |
| NetBeans | Code, Bugs and Documentation for the Netbeans IDE. This is one place where non-technical users can contribute in the form of tutorials, help pages, etc. |
IDEs, Java, Netbeans. |
| Apache Derby |
Putback code into the Apache derby codebase. Derby is a complete relational-database implementation with a very small footprint written fully in Java. |
Java, Database |
| Open Portal |
Portlets, Bugs, RFEs, Documentation. Work on the technologies (listed in link). Help with the integration with Netbeans. | Java, website, remote accesss |
A suggestion to fellow students. Select your project depending upon your interest. It wont matter if you haven’t contributed in the field/project before. This contest is meant to be that bridge. Once you have a topic selected, join all the appropriate mailing lists and IRC channels. Download the relevant source code and look through it. Once you have an idea of the flow of code, you can start with the actual coding. Be sure to learn how to ask questions on a mailing-list. The folks who work on your selected project will be more than happy to help you.
Go here for complete contest guidelines. You can take a look at the rules and FAQ.
Drop any queries you have below.
Welcome to free software. Happy coding!”
as found on Anil Gulecha’s Blog.
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