[Bug-wget] Another GSoC Student

[ekrell]

Hello all,

I just found out about Google Summer of Code three days ago. I have 
always wanted to contribute to open source, but have thus far only 
contributed to very minor projects. In particular, I want to eventually 
be able to contribute to the Linux kernel. Over the semester, I have 
been studying OS design in class and Linux in particular in my spare 
time. However, it is such a massive entity that I think it makes more 
sense to start with something more approachable. I am excited about GSoC 
as it looks to be a very good introduction to getting involved with open 
source. Wget is something that I use all the time, and I knew that I 
should look into this when I saw that it was a GSoC participating 
project.

While I have quite a bit of programming experience in personal and 
university projects, it is quite another thing to code for a significant 
and established program. I feel that this would be an important next 
step for my development as a programmer. I believe that I am not as 
experienced as some applicants, but, encouraged by the "Am I Good 
Enough?" page, decided that it can't hurt to get involved. Regardless of 
acceptance for GSoC, I intend to work on patches and contribute in 
general.

I spent the majority of yesterday reading and writing code in wget. I've 
compiled, run the tests, and worked on patches. I wrote 2 minor patches, 
but found afterward that they had already been submitted by other 
applicants. Also, in order to really understand how wget works, I have 
been implementing gopher support. There may not be any demand for such a 
feature, but by playing with it I have been learning how the existing 
protocols are implemented and how to code in such a way that makes sense 
with the existing infrastructure, writing test cases, etc. Additionally, 
I just like gopher sites. I know that I need to come up with a project 
idea though soon; the testing FTP server intrigues me.

Thanks for joining up with GSoC,
Evan Krell
(GillSans on irc)