Skip to main content

Season of KDE

Started in 2013, Season of KDE is a community outreach program that has been hosted by the KDE community as a program similar to, but not quite the same as Google Summer of Code, offering an opportunity to everyone (not just students) to participate in both code and non-code projects that benefits the KDE ecosystem. Through the Season of KDE, the participant gets familiar and comfortable with the KDE’s codebase and documentation. In the past few years, SoK participants have not only contributed new application features but have also developed the KDE Continuous Integration System, statistical reports for developers, a web framework, ported KDE Applications, created documentation and lots and lots of other work.

Season of KDE program spans about 3 months and student application and mentor application submission begins around December. The first month of the program is given to communicating period where students exchange ideas with the expected mentor, through IRCs and mailing lists and mentor verifies the feasibility of the idea.

For students thinking to get started for contributing in this program are recommended for to first go through some of the applications they like and look at the technologies used, mostly being C++, Qt, QML, and CMake.

Purpose of Season of KDE:

Purpose of the SoK program is to support as many budding developers as interested to begin their journey in Free and Open-source Software world and also, to encourage those students who missed the change to get through the GSoC (Google Summer of Code). Season of KDE program support the students with perfect mentor-ship and deliver them the best experience of being a part of a big community like KDE, with exciting goodies like T-shirt and certificate.

Criteria for applying to Season of KDE:

Everyone and anyone around the world who is passionate about this program can take part in this program.

Why should one take part in Season of KDE?

  • Flexible timeline - The KDE organisation always holds the Season of KDE, keeping in mind the GSoC timeline. With GSoC right around the corner, taking part in Season of KDE is the best way for the student participants to get comfortable with the code base and the project community before they apply for GSoC if they plan to.
  • Best Mentorship - The KDE community is very beginner-friendly where the enthusiastic and ever-helping members are always there to help with any queries and support.
  • Experience - Experience of working on a project and completing it within a premeditated timeline is the best way to gain the workmanship and time management skills.
  • Swags and Certificates

Where and When it is held?

The Season of KDE program is completely online where the participants remotely work on their projects and contribute to the organisation and it generally starts in December/January lasting for 2-3 months.

Application process:

  • Before Drafting Proposal - You should choose your favorite KDE project that you will like to help improve through your contributions, be it the KDE web framework, Plasma Mobile, Desktop based KDE projects like Krita, Kdenlive, etc or even KDE Documents. Each project has its own repository where many beginner-friendly issues and bugs are available to help the participant get started with contributing to KDE.
  • Drafting Proposal - The proposal should primarily focus on the problem at hand, the project topic, and a basic idea of how they plan to solve it. The proposal should mention about the past contributions to KDE to ensure the mentors that the participants have basic knowledge of the project before the SoK begins.
  • Getting Selected - Once the participant submits a proposal, they will be selected by their respective project mentors. The selected participants then begin their respective projects and work to complete it within the specified timeline and The participants have to stay in constant touch with their mentors and keep the KDE community updated with their progress through weekly or biweekly blog posts in the official KDE blog page and updating their respective status report pages.