OPW Application Template
Do not forget adding your submission at OutReachProgramForWomen/Applications
Name: Akshita Jha
Email Address: zenith158@gmail.com
IRC Nick: akshitajha
Web Page / Blog / Microblog: @akshitajha
Location: Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India
Education completed or in progress (i.e., university, major/concentration, degree level, and graduation year): B.Tech in Computer Science & MS in Computational Linguistics from International Institude Of Technology [IIIT], Hyderabad. Completion : 2017
How did you hear about this program?: Open Source Development Group [OSDG] meet in my college.
Please describe your experience with Debian as a user and as a contributor (Please include the information about the required contribution you made to the project you are interested in here): I have been using Debian based distros for quite some time. As a user I feel they are very stable because of their Debian backend. Debian's easy to use “apt” tool is also an additional plus point for its users. As a contibutor, I have just started with Debsources Improvement project by Debian. Please see the bugs listed below where I submitted my patch by email:
#761863 : use relative paths in cache/sources.txt
#762931 : flake8 compliance
Please describe your experience with any other FOSS projects as a user and as a contributor: Apart from the softwares that are shipped with Debian based distros, I frequently use the following tools for NLP:
I am relatively new to FOSS and do not have much experience as a contributor. I have just begun my journey and I plan on contributing a great deal.Please describe any relevant projects that you have worked on previously and what knowledge you gained from working on them: I am relatively new to FOSS and do not have much experience as a contributor. I have just begun my journey and I plan on contributing a great deal.
What project(s) are you interested in (these can be in the same or different organizations)?: Debsources Improvement
Who is a possible mentor for the project you are most interested in?: Stefano Zacchiroli, Matthieu Caneill
Please describe the details and the timeline of the work you plan to accomplish on the project you are most interested in (discuss these first with the mentor of the project): The deliverables for the project Debsources Improvement is any significant subset of the open bugs. As discussed with my mentor, the workflow will be moslty dynamic. But, the tentative timeline is:
Step 1: Solve the easy bugs to get familiar with the codebase. Mastering the processes of the project (TDD, maintenance of a Debsources instance with a large DB).
Step 2: Feature-based work (diffing, new plugins, tarball-in-tarball, more advanced queries). Start refactoring of the code base.
Step 3: Substantial refactoring/evolution work, like deduplication, injection of derivatives, multiple archive support, etc.
Will you have any other time commitments, such as school work, another job, planned vacation, etc., between December 9, 2014 and March 9, 2015?:I may have to attend the International Conference on Natural Language Processing (ICON-2014) in Goa, India during December 18-21, 2014. But I am mostly free between December 9, 2014 and March 9, 2015.
Background: something about yourself: technical skills, experience, etc. Who are you?: I am in my 3rd year of the integrated course of B.Tech in Computer Science and MS in Computational Linguistics. I have a background in C, C++ and Python. I am also familiar with SQL, MySQL and bash scripting. I have designed an elementary NLIDB (Natural Language Interface To Databse) Systems for Library domain. I am interested in web designing and have made web applications using ?Web2Py. I have also designed websites for a few startups. The links are given below:
http://honeyspec.com/ - Designed the logo and the website
http://pristineestates.in – Designed the website
Why Debian? Why are you choosing Debian? What attracts you about Debian? : I am surrounded by people who use Debian. My college, IIIT-H is a known Debian user https://www.debian.org/users/edu/virtualLabs-iiith. The thing that personally attracts me about Debian is that it lives upto its tagline of Universal Operating System. It supports a variety of architectures and devices and has loads of easy to use pre-compiled packages, which are available free of cost. Debsources is an infrastructure which has a mirror of all Debian packages, whose source code is easy browsable. The fact that I am getting a chance to contibute towards such an important service of Debian, is itself reamarkable. I would love to be a part of such an influential Open Source Community.
Are you applying for other projects in OPW? Note that letting us know about this does not impact your chances of acceptance or rejection with us; we ask this because it helps us to resolve deduplications wherein an applicant is accepted for multiple projects.: No, Debsources Improvement is the only project I am applying for.