Introduction

Welcome to the Google Highly Open Participation contest, and welcome to Python! We're thrilled to have you!

Getting started

You should probably start by reading the contest rules and Frequently Asked Questions. If you meet the various requirements (you're 13 or over, in school, and have parental consent) and are still interested in participating in the contest, then you might want to check out Python before continuing. There's a great Beginner's Guide that's the best place to start.

Choosing tasks

There are a bunch of different tasks, ranging from documenting stuff, to giving a presentation on something, and even to programming. You can visit the issues tracker to see all of the tasks that are still available, or you can go visit our TaskBreakdown page to see tasks grouped by category.

If you have questions about the tasks, feel free to ask on the ghop-python mailing list or by writing a comment on the task. But remember that until you claim a task, someone else can jump in and claim the task ahead of you...

Working on tasks

In the interests of fairness to you, the project, the mentors, and other students, we have a few rules about working on the tasks. The most important rule is that you need to communicate with us, the mentors, so that we know what's going on with your task and we know that you're working on it.

So, if you are interested in working on a particular task, be sure you understand that:

- when a time limit is not specified in the description of the task, you must complete the task within five days, unless you gain explicit permission from a project mentor (on the discussion mailing list) for an extension;

- you can only claim one task at a time;

- you must communicate with the discussion mailing list within a day of claiming the task, assuring us that you're still alive and that you're making progress.

- a task is not complete until you've actually sent us something. (Exactly what you need to send is specified in each task.)

If you don't complete the task on time, or try to claim multiple tasks, or don't communicate with us, we will re-open the task for other students to claim and you won't get credit for it!

Claiming a task

Please enter a comment for the issue, "I claim this task".

It would also be nice to send a short email introducing yourself to the ghop-python discussion list so that we get to know you. You might get a faster approval if you do this as more of us are monitoring the discussion list than the site itself.

Communicating with us

This is so important that we want to really emphasize it: you need to talk to us! At the very least, you need to send an e-mail to the discussion list every time you complete a task or take a new one. However, this list is also a source for help on every aspect of the tasks: do you need a pointer to a resource? Is your code not working for reasons you don't understand? Ask the list. We won't mind, and this is an entirely accepted way of making progress on open source projects.

Completing tasks

Each task has a specific completion condition -- submitting patches to the documentation or to code, or uploading presentation materials, or whatnot. Please attach the patches or presentation materials to the task by going to the issue page, click on "Add a comment...", and attaching the file or files. Then (and this is very important!) e-mail the discussion list and ask for a mentor to look over the files you've uploaded. Only a mentor can close a task!

If you are working on a third-party application or library, then we would also recommend sending your changes or results to the project owner of the third-party application. For example, if you're working on Crunchy, getting Andre Roberge's approval of your results is a great way to demonstrate to us that you've done a good job.

Also see ExtraCreditAndBestContributor for information on how to win "best contributor".

Licensing and Attribution

The GHOP contest requires any code and other contributions you provide to be given under an open source license, to ensure your work is available for use by anyone in the world.

The Python interpreter and standard library are released under the open source Python license; other Python projects you may be working on in your tasks are licensed under BSD/MIT license, the GPL, etc. In order to contribute to those projects you must agree that the code, ideas, and all other aspects of your contributions to those projects are released under the respective license, so that they may be included in the projects without further problems.

• More info: Contest Official Rules, the Python License

We are very pleased to have your help and as a courtesy are happy to attribute your work in various places, including for example Python's ACKS file or blog entries. We will assume you want your name mentioned unless you suggest an alias, or the desire to remain anonymous. If you do not want your name used in association with the contribution, state that clearly in a comment on the task.

If your task's result is independent of a specific existing project -- such as a Web Service API -- you should create a new Google Code project containing the code, in order to help it become a real community project; we would be happy to help you with that.

Media works, such as screencasts, should be placed under an open license too -- the Creative Commons license is suitable here.

Disputes, arbitration, and general unfairness

If you have any questions or comments about your dealings with a particular mentor or set of mentors, please simply discuss them on the mailing list. Note that there are general rules of conduct expected of you, as well as everyone else on the mailing list; see Netiquette for more information.

If you disagree with the decision of the mentoring organization (in this case, Python!) you can contact Google directly to resolve the dispute. See the main Google Highly Open Participation page for more information.

Other Questions

If you have a question not answered here that is related to contest mechanics, your best bet is to check out Google's contest homepage (http://code.google.com/opensource/ghop/2007-8) for more details.