So, this is a post after a long time since I had applied for the Google Summer of Code 2009. Santosh and Madhusudan had participated in GSoC last year and their talk about it got me inspired to take part this year. So, I went through the ideas list this year and one project about PlasMate, which was supposed to be an editor and packager which would make the otherwise lengthy task of scripting a plasmoid and packaging it and sharing it with the community, easier and efficient. So, I saw the existing code and application to get a feel how it was in its current stage and how it can be improved. I wrote a proposal about whatever I could think of implementing and improving. I submitted my proposal after getting feedback from my kde friends and plasma developers. But unfortunately, it was not accepted. The good thing was I was not too disappointed by what happened, because it was due to some silly mistakes from my side –

1. Everywhere people said thats its always an advantage that you submit the proposal early, so I did it, but here was my BIGGEST mistake, GSoC webapp had written in big font in blue colors “edit my proposal”, and even then I didn't notice it, always having some new ideas, but “unable” to add them to my proposal as I thought its not possible to edit the proposal after submission.
2. I'm considerably new to KDE, and to developing real life software, so I didn't have such good ideas as the Guy Diego Casella who was selected for Plasmate.

I had a wonderful experience when writing the proposal, the support from everyone was encouraging, and best of all, GSoC accomplished its primary goal, atleast with me, it added another student to the Free Software community, and many more of those who wanted to write some good code but didn't know where to do it. The best thing about GSoC, you're given incentive for what you like the most, writing code, and that too for Plasma!, its beautiful, KDE rocks!! 🙂 But anyway, that doesn't change things too much, KDE will still receive bugfixes and contributions from me, its so much rewarding to fix some problem or add features. Again, KDE rocks!! (And by the way, I really don't like to make mistakes two times, so GSoC 2010, here I come 😛 )