[glug-t] Novell Open Source Internship Program

Novell Open Source Internship Program

About:
This document explains about the Novell Open Source Internship Program. It 
talks about the objectives of this program, how a student can join this program 
and how Novell can help the students here. It also talks about the terms and 
conditions associated with this program. It has the following sections:

Objective
Process
Projects
Expectations
Terms and conditions
Students acceptance
Contributor's agreement
Template for certificate
FAQ


Objective:
The objective of this program is to encourage the open source initiatives in 
the student community in India. It is well known that the most significant 
contributions to the Open Source product development come from students in 
Europe and America. India at this points lags in this.

Open Source Software development is very good for the students because they 
will get the chance to work with some of the most skilled engineers and do the 
most challenging product development work. They will also get the public 
recognition and acknowledgement of their contributions, which is very useful in 
the long term. Most professional courses also have a mandatory requirement to 
do an industry project.

Novell provides an opportunity for the students to do this project under the 
guidance of Novell engineers on the open source products supported by Novell. 
This could be done through students having an internship program with Novell. 
Novell intends to help these students in completing their curriculum project. 
As part of that, Novell would provide all the necessary technical guidance and 
support to the students.


Process:
1. The interested students need to contact Novell through their college 
coordinators, and request Novell to assign a project to them. The HOD or the 
college coordinators need to give a formal request (in a hard copy) to Novell 
to assign the open source project to their students. This letter needs to be on 
the college letterhead with the names of the student(s), and needs to be posted 
to:

The HR Manager,
Novell Software Development (I) Pvt. Ltd,
49/1 & 49/3, Garvebhavipalya
7th Mile, Hosur Road
Bangalore - 560068

You can FAX the letter to us at 080-5731870 for expediting the process, but we 
would definitely require an original letter within a week of receiving the FAX.

2. Upon receiving the request from the college, Novell would ask the students 
to sign the "Contributor's agreement". Novell would also share the expectations 
and "Terms and conditions" from the students. The students need to read them, 
and submit the signed acceptance letter to Novell. The acceptance letter needs 
to be signed by a guardian before being signed by the student. This needs to be 
given in a hard copy to Novell.

3. Once the expectations and "Terms and conditions" are agreed upon by the 
student, Novell would assign a project work to the student, which the student 
needs to complete within the stipulated time.

4. At the end of one month of the project, the Novell engineers will assess the 
progress made and make a recommendation on the continuance of the internship 
program. This is primarily to avoid the situation where no progress is made and 
the student mandatory course requirements are unlikely to be met from this 
internship program. It would be advised to these students to join a project 
training elsewhere for the course requirements. Novell will not issue any 
certificate in this case.

5. At the end of the full duration of the project training, another detailed 
assessment will be made and that be written in the certificate from the 
company. The template of that certificate is provided below.


Projects:
Novell is currently looking at students interested in the following projects:

GNOME (http://www.gnome.org)
Mono (http://www.go-mono.com/contributing.html)
OpenOffice (http://ooo.ximian.com)
UDDI (http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?uddi)
Evolution (http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution)


Expectations:
This section gives specific expectations that Novell has from the students 
during the internship period. In general, we expect students to complete their 
assigned tasks on time. To give an idea about the size of the task, here are 
few examples:

Suppose a student takes a 3 month project, he would be expected to complete 
tasks like:

http://www.gnome.org/bounties/Mailer.php3#127526
or
http://www.gnome.org/bounties/Mailer.php3#127514

For a student who takes a 6 month project, the expectations would be complete 
tasks like:

http://www.gnome.org/bounties/OpenOffice.org.php3#127556
or
http://www.gnome.org/bounties/Tasks.php3#127559


Terms and conditions:
1. The interested students need to have a computer and an internet connection 
for doing the assigned work. This is a prerequisite for this program. Novell 
would try to help the students as much as possible for other things like the 
source code CD, etc. It is recommended that the students work from their 
institutional computer centers, that should be able to provide these resources 
to them. The workspace for doing these projects will not be provided at the 
Novell office.

2. Before the students make any submissions, they would be required to read and 
sign the contributor's agreement. This agreement ensures that the code 
submitted by the student is theirs and they agree to all the licensing terms 
(GPL/LGPL/BSD) of the projects they want to get associated with.

3. There is no cash stipend for the students for this training period. The 
projects will be with the large Open Source projects in which many highly 
skilled engineers work without cash rewards. The opportunity to work at Novell 
after the project for the candidates who do a very good job may be available, 
at the discretion of the company management.

4. While Novell would use its best judgment during the project assignment, it 
will not be in a position to assess if the assigned tasks meet all the 
curriculum requirements for the students. We expect that the students work with 
their HODs to ensure that the project assigned meets the college curriculum 
requirements. Novell would provide whatever help is required for the same.

5. Novell does not have any selection criteria while taking students into this 
program, apart from the student's interest. But we do feel a need to do an 
honest assessment of the progress after one month of the project commencement. 
This is to ensure that if the student is not able to contribute to these 
projects, they get to know about it early enough. In that case, they take some 
other projects elsewhere, to complete their curriculum requirements. Novell 
will not issue any certificate to the student in that circumstance.

6. Once the student completes the program successfully, Novell would give them 
a completion certificate. This certificate would details about the work done by 
the student in the training period.

7. This program does not restrict the student to enroll into another internship 
program through some other organization. The student is free to participate in 
another program while working on the Novell Open Source Internship program. 
This is to encourage the interested students to be part of more than one 
project.

8. Novell will not be in a position to drive the student to complete all the 
assigned tasks. We believe that the students need to be self driven for all the 
work that they undertake.


Students acceptance:
This needs to be signed by the student's guardian (Teacher/Parent), and then by 
the student. By signing this, the guardian accepts that he/she has understood 
the program requirements (Expectations and Conditions) and have explained the 
same to the student.

I have read through the Expectations and "Terms and conditions" and have 
explained the same to the student.

Guardian/Professor:

Signature:

Date:





I have read through the Expectations, and understand what Novell expects from 
me during the internship program.

I have read the "Terms and conditions" and I agree to them completely.

Student's name:

Signature:

Date:


Contributor's agreement:
The purpose of the Agreement is to clarify the intellectual property terms 
governing submissions you make to the open source project of Novell, Inc., a 
Delaware corporation with offices at 1800 South Novell Place, Provo, Utah 84604 
("Novell"). Novell includes all Novell affiliates, subsidiaries, successors, 
and assigns.

You and Novell hereby accept and agree to the following terms and conditions:

1. You represent that, except as disclosed in your Contribution submission(s), 
each of your Contributions is your original creation. You agree to notify 
Novell of any facts or circumstances of which you become aware that would make 
your representations in this Agreement inaccurate in any respect.

2. You represent that you are legally entitled to grant the required license. 
If your employer(s) or others ("Third Parties") have rights to intellectual 
property that you create, you represent that you have received permission to 
make the Contributions on behalf of such Third Parties, or that the Third 
Parties have waived such rights for your Contributions.

3. You are not expected to provide support for your Contributions, except to 
the extent you desire to provide support. You may provide support for free, for 
a fee, or not at all. Your Contributions are provided as-is, with all faults 
defects and errors, and without warranty of any kind (either express or 
implied) including, without limitation, any implied warranty of merchantability 
and fitness for a particular purpose and any warranty of non-infringement.

Signature:_____________________________________________________________________

Full name:_____________________________________________________________________

Mailing Address:________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

Telephone:____________________________________________________________________

Fax:__________________________________________________________________________

E-mail:________________________________________________________________________

Country:______________________________________________________________________

(Please see below for the contact address for submission of this form)


Sajeev Asok,
Senior Legal Executive
Novell software Development (I) Pvt. Ltd.
49/1 & 49/3, Garvebhavipalya
7th Mile, Hosur Road
Bangalore - 560068, 
India

Fax: 91-80-5731870


Template for certificate:
This is a draft template, and it may undergo some changes in the future. This 
is just to highlight the contents of the certificate that would be given to 
students after completing their projects.


To whomsoever it may concern



This is to certify that "student" has participated in the Open Source 
Internship Program by Novell Software Development (I) Private Ltd., 
from "startdate" to "enddate".

His project was titled "projectname".

As Part of his project, he completed the following tasks: "task details" "URLs"

We wish him very best for the future.




Date: 

"authorized signatory"

Novell Software Development (I) Private Ltd.,


FAQ:
This section has some useful frequently asked questions and their answers, 
which will help the students in understanding the process better.

Q: How do I know if I am the right person for this job?
A: If you have passion for doing good development in some of the prestigious 
projects like GNOME, Mono, OpenOffice and UDDI, and do not mind stretching a 
bit (lot), then you may be the right person. The results could make you a world-
wide celebrity, if you work well. You need to work from your college/home, and 
need to have the resources, like computer and internet connection. Like a 
typical open source project, you will _not_ get paid for your work. But there 
could be some rewards/benefits for good performers, which may come if you make 
good contributions.

Q: What is open source? Where can I get more information about it?
A: Read this online book on open source: 
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/toc.html 

Q: How can I be part of this team?
A: Please send an email to pgoel@xxxxxxxxxx , indicating which project you want 
to get associated with. Also mention the duration of your course (depending 
upon your course length). I am looking for people who can confirm their 
participation, so that we can move forward with the work assignments. Even for 
people who have some time to start their semester projects, we can identify 
areas where they can get involved to get some early lead.

Q: What else is expected from me during this course?
A: Good commitment to work hard, good skills to analyze complex problems/code, 
at least 2 emails per week to communicate your status, and some time everyday 
on the IRC channel with us.

Q: How do I benefit from my involvement in the project?
A: This is a great opportunity for you to be involved in the cutting edge 
product development that provides you with an unparalleled exposure to the real 
world software development process. Apart from being a great learning 
opportunity, you even get the recognition in the open source developer 
community through your active participation. This is a good opportunity for you 
to create an identity for yourself in the programming world, even before 
beginning your career. Moreover, you can do this as your academic project as 
part of your curriculum. Depending upon the contributions that you make during 
your work, Novell will give you a certificate when you complete the work, as 
required by your course. On top of it, we at Novell will provide you support to 
get up to speed on these projects.

Q: What kind of contributions can I make to this project?
A: The model is based upon meritocracy. You will begin by doing smaller tasks, 
including bug-fixing. Depending upon the quality of your work (time taken, 
quality of fixes, awareness of the domain, etc.), you may soon get more serious 
enhancements, or new features.

Q: Is there any minimum or maximum duration for which I can be associated with 
the project?
A: No. You can participate in the project as long as you wish to. You can 
either involve yourself in this project just based on your academic requirement 
or continue to be involved even beyond that point. In the system of 
meritocracy, you will get higher responsibility and recognition based on the 
duration of your association and the quality of contributions made by you. We 
hope that this is a beginning of a long-term relationship. After the completion 
of this internship program, you can certainly continue as an open source 
contributors like many other people worldwide.

-- 
Free the Code.
Free the User.

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