The NixOS Foundation participates in the Outreachy program this year, and warmly invite anyone who’d like to mentor their own intern to submit projects until 2025-03-14 16:00 UTC. Outreachy provides an invaluable opportunity for underrepresented groups in tech to gain hands-on experience in open-source development. By becoming a mentor, you can help shape the careers of talented interns while contributing to a more diverse and inclusive tech community.
Key details:
Deadline to submit projects: March 14 at 4pm UTC
Mentor commitment: Mentors are expected to dedicate at least 5 hours per week to guide their interns. This commitment is essential to ensure meaningful and effective mentorship throughout the internship. Both interns and mentors work remotely.
Guidelines for submitting projects: Make sure your project aligns with the Outreachy project guidelines, and consider the level of mentorship required. The project must be something an intern can realistically achieve within 3 months, with guidance and support from you as a mentor.
Sponsorship leads: The NixOS Foundation will fund a trainee a for Summer of Nix (where you can soon apply for mentoring), but additional interns need their participation funded separately. If you have organisations that would be likely to sponsor additional trainees, please let Outreachy know.
Aside from the outreachy requirements about scope, workload, structure etc., are there any examples of what would be considered relevant projects that would be accepted?
Like are we just talking work on nixpkgs or NixOS/nix-community org projects, or could it be anything Nix/NixOS adjacent?
Thank you for your interest. We are currently talking about potential Outreachy project proposals. If you have something in your mind we are very happy to hear about it. But be aware that deadline to submit projects is March 7 at 4pm UTC.
So… circling back to my actual question, about how related it has to be, could you clarify that? I’d like some assurance that investing time writing a proposal is worth it, what would be considered relavant/irrelavant?
Therefore I’d support any effort in that direction, of course including paying for mentor hours (according to hourly rates based on the Summer of Nix stipends table). This means it should probably revolve around NGIpkgs, Nixpkgs, or NixOS, or related tooling such as from nix-community. But that doesn’t preclude being creative, which is why @imincik’s suggested you share your ideas or add them to the pile directly.
I can’t answer the more general question “Can I work on Nix/NixOS-adjacent things under the NixOS Foundation label?” outside of this particular scope though. It would be for the steering committee or foundation board to decide what still counts as adjacent.
Post-Quantum Crytopgraphy is an important advancement in the field of cryptography aimed at addressing vulnerabilities in classical cryptographic algorithms which could be exploited by a quantum computer. Post-Quantum Cryptographic algorithms, or PQC, have recently been standardized by NIST (the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology), meaning that they are ready to be widely implemented.
The Open Quantum Safe project has created a fork of OpenSSH with implementations of Post-Quantum Cryptographic algorithms. OpenSSH is an existing open source project which uses cryptography to secure shell connections to remote machines and devices. The adoption of PQC algorithms by projects such as OpenSSH is an important step forwards in Quantum Readiness.
NixOS is an open source project and Linux distribution which includes an OpenSSH package. In this project, the intern would learn how to install and configure NixOS on a computer or virtual machine. They would then package a variant of the OpenSSH package based on the Open Quantum Safe fork and create a pull request to make it available to NixOS.
Thank you for sharing your pitch! The project sounds very interesting, and I’m genuinely encouraged to see it submitted to the program.
Just a quick reminder that the deadline to submit projects is March 14th, 2025. I encourage you to finalize your submission soon to ensure it’s included.
Looking forward to seeing how this develops! Let me know if I can help in any way.
@john-craig thanks for your project proposal, it looks like a challenging but reasonable thing to work on! I added it to the list that will get published on 2025-03-17. Please note that this won’t fall under Nix@NGI, but it would be a great contribution to NixOS.
@RossComputerGuy volunteered as a community coordinator on Outreachy, and he’ll be available to answer general questions about the technology. Thanks a lot for your help!
I proposed a project motivated by some recent conversations I’ve had, but I haven’t so far put much thought into the precise timeline, scope, or eligibility. I’d be also happy to co-mentor any other project
I don’t have any ideas for a project at the moment, but I would be interested in co-mentoring if a spot is available. This is a really great program and I’d love to support it
I’m new to nixos community but really love the usage and potential of nix and want to help nixos etc.
I see this post is for mentors and proposals. But I want to be an intern for this. Should the mentors pick the interns themselves? or should I apply for it somewhere else. With some guidance, I am eager to learn and help with the proposals by mentors
Are you already an outreachy applicant? This program is only for outreachy folks. You are more than welcome to join the effort, but you may not be eligible for outreachy programs/benefits.