What is this about?

The Summer of Nix is a two month train && work project that will take place between August 2nd to October 15th 2021. It is made for anyone who wants to rapidly increase their Nix skills while doing useful work for the Nix and the wider FOSS community - all of this together in a remote team and getting paid a nice stipend. After the program, there will be opportunities for continued work as paid freelance contractor with the NixOS foundation.

Who is organizing this, and why?

The program is funded via the European Comission's Next Generation Internet Initiative and organized by members of the core Nix development team, the NixOS foundation, the NLnet foundation and Tweag. The wider goal is to establish Nix as one of the principal platforms for free and open source software. Concretely, this means packaging many free and open programs, and improving the general packaging situation in Nix. The program's is set up to train up to 30 participants to become at ease in the Nix ecosystem and to deliver as many packages as possible from a list of strategic projects.

For whom is this interesting?

This program is great for students, professionals or passionates who can spend the time over summer  to rapidly increase their Nix skills while doing useful, paid work. Experienced Nix packagers are also very welcome to participate in a mentoring role. What we need from you is commitment, motivation and basic Nix knowledge (you should know what a nix shell is, the basics of nixpkgs and the language as explained, for example, in the nix pills tutorial). Of course, also a reasonably fast computer and internet connection is required although we might be able to provide some cloud infrastructure.

Time Zones

The program is open to applicants from all time zones and countries. Although many members of the organization committee are based in Europe, training sessions and workshops will be adjusted as good as possible to work for the majority of participants and flexible arrangements will be found for others.

Compensation

The compensation is fixed to a base rate of 2750 Euro in all member states of the European Union and associated countries like Norway, the UK and Switzerland. For participants elsewhere, this base rate is adjusted with a factor taking into account purchasing power parity similar to the GSoC program. The precise stipend amounts will be communicated individually to succesful applicants.

How to apply?

If you meet the requirements outlined above, that is mostly having a basic understanding of Nix, time in August and September and motivation to work with us, simply write a mail to summer@nixos.org with the following content:

An organizer will contact you soon (within 7 days) after that to conduct a short 15min interview. We will select a first group of participants on May 15th and a second on July 1st. Please understand that the number of participants is limited (30).

FAQ

• Is a GitHub account required? - Yes
• I am a student. Can I use this program as internship? - There is no universal answer to this since internship programs differ from country to country and even university to university. We are open to internships but please contact us so that we can figure out together whether it is possible or not.
• I'm not a student. Can I also apply? - Yes. We welcome any motivated individuals who want to learn state-of-the-art Nix, and have the time and ability to participate. Do make sure that you can take the 2 months full time learning and working with Nix. 
• I don't know anything about Nix. Can I apply? - We expect at least basic experience with Nix, which would hopefully allow us to move you up to an advanced level during the course of the Summer Programme. The program is not about learning the fundamentals. So if Nix is all new to you and you find this kind of program interesting - deep dive into learning Nix straightaway, and make sure you are ready.
• I cannot program, do I need to? - Fundamental programming skills are required, but very profound knowledge is not. Nix packaging isn't software programming but making software that already exists easily available for everyone. This software can be written in various programming languages and so during the program you will need to figure out how to deal superficially with those language ecosystems that the software you are packaging uses and also sometimes with those of the dependencies. Luckily, there are tens of thousands of packages already in nixpkgs to learn from.
• Which packages are we going to package? -  We will package a number of cutting edge free and open source applications in the field of privacy and trust enhancing technologies, as well as tools aimed at search, discovery and discoverability. These range from tools to develop open hardware chips to fediverse applications, but all of them have one thing in common: they are actively developed libre projects community, funded through the ambitious NGI Zero programme.
• Who is going to mentor? - Mentors will be established community members.
• I could mentor. Are you looking for more mentors? - Yes, please write us an email.
• What is expected to be delivered at the end of the Summer of Code? We aim to deliver about three new Nix packages on average per partcipant. On average is important here because some high value packages are a lot more difficult to package than others and this will be taken into account.
• Where can I get more information? - Please send us a mail to summer@nixos.org.