A new Google Summer Of Code season for Open Food Facts
In short: we have 4 projects selected for the Google.org programme which sponsors students to work on Open Source projects over the summer. Jump to the selected projects section to find out more.
The annual student surge
Every year between February and April, new contributors arrive on the Open Food Facts Slack. Some of them aren’t there by chance – they have a goal in mind! To contribute to the software that enables the largest open food database to function and perhaps be selected for the Google Summer Of Code.
The Google Summer Of Code is a programme run by the Google.org foundation to enable students to take an interest in Open Source and contribute to it. Thanks to internships paid for by the foundation, students will be able to spend an entire summer participating in the Open Source project of their choice. As well as being an Open Data project, all the software created by the Open Food Facts project is Open Source.
What are Open Source and Open Data?
Open Source refers to software that guarantees certain rights to users: freedom to see the source code and study it, to use it for any useful purpose, to modify it to adapt it to other uses and to share it with others.
Open Data is the equivalent of Open Source for data, which is also guaranteed to be accessible to all, modifiable and shareable. These are the two pillars that make it possible to build digital commons that are open to all. Open Food Facts is one of the digital public goods recognised by the UN.
A period of intense contribution
Each year, the Google.org foundation decides on a set of projects that will benefit from the programme (as it is unable to support all the projects, of which there are many). This year, as in 2022 and 2019, Open Food Facts was lucky enough to be selected. This is also thanks to our qualified volunteers who have agreed to take part as mentors in various projects proposed to the students.
The first part of the programme asks students to start getting to grips with the project and demonstrate their ability to contribute to it and be part of its community. We had a lot of contributions during this period, always with a lot of enthusiasm but of very variable quality! However, some of the contributions proved to be very interesting for the project. We really want to thank all the applicants who tried to contribute as best they could. We also apologise for the fact that the mentors were sometimes overwhelmed by the number of contributions and were not always able to help everyone.
The selected projects
Google then selected the candidates according to a list of preferences proposed by Open Food Facts, based on the value of the proposals and above all the contributions, without knowing how many “projects” would be funded. In the end, 4 projects were selected:
The first will be led by Estrella Paoli to finalise the regular import of the USDA database, another Open Data database on food, to supplement the Open Food Facts data. This will strengthen the database available in North America. She will also be able to work on improving the quality of exports from the database.
A second, led by Jagjeevan Kashid, is very technical but important: it involves improving the experience of developers working on the database engine (codenamed ‘Product Opener’) so that more developers can participate in its improvements and do so more efficiently.
A third group, led by Kirtan Chandak, is working on improving the Folksonomy Engine, an engine for collaborative modelling of any type of product. It enables anyone to coordinate efforts on new aspects of products. The project aims to improve the interfaces to make it more intuitive and useful.
Finally, the last project, led by Mitali Singh, will continue to develop Open Food Facts Explorer. This project, which has an experimental side, is building a new interface to the website to make it easier to use, more dynamic and in line with current expectations.
A summer of contributions ☀️🍊
The students have already started to work hard on the projects and we hope they will enjoy contributing. Don’t hesitate to visit our Slack or github pages to follow the progress of these projects.
Of course, we’re sorry for the students who weren’t selected (including several we would have selected ourselves).
Some of them have decided to continue contributing all the same, and that’s really the spirit of Google Summer of Code, so we’ll be doing our utmost to ensure that it’s both useful to the project and rewarding for them.
👉 Don’t hesitate to join the project and contribute in one way or another to food transparency, which has many benefits for health, the environment and much more.