Internship programs

Table of Contents

In the past, our project welcomed a FSF internship (2018), several Google Summers of Code (between 2006 and 2013; then in 2022 and 2023). We were also proposed to be in the #BlueHats 🧢 Semester of Code, organized by a France governmental organization and a French school though it didn’t end in an internship. Other organizations should feel free to propose us internships.

How to participate

The rules for each internship is specific to organizers, not us. Please refer to every program’s rules.

On GIMP side, we don’t care about your origins, your country, your gender, your age or education, or anything else, so we don’t have such rules of our own. Though we do have technical rules for us to accept your project:

  • Compile GIMP, from the git repository, before acceptance deadline (don’t hesitate to ask us for help). This is important. People who skip this step generally fail and we don’t want to spend all our time teaching you how to compile a software.
  • Get familiarized with GIMP and/or GEGL code: fix a few bugs and contribute patches (this link also contains lists of bugs tagged for newcomers). It doesn’t necessarily have to be the most complicated fixes. We mostly need to interact with you in a technical manner to see how you handle code review and technical feedback.
  • Socialize and communicate: join #gimp channel in GIMPNet IRC network to discuss your idea with developers, find a developer interested in mentoring you and get a primary approval from your mentor to be. We are human beings too and we like to interact with contributors. Do not simply publish your project with whatever platform or procedure is proposed by the organizer. Get in touch with us first on IRC.
  • Possibly introduce your project more technically on Gitlab: this can be useful to explain the details too long for an IRC conversation. We expect you to understand what you are proposing well enough to explain it to us. So do your research. It can also help both you and us to determine if the project is feasible or not, and in turn, developers can explain base technical points to get you started.

During all these steps, do not hesitate to ask questions and interact with us. It might seem like I already said it too much, but communication is absolutely the key to a succesful project.

If you have already done all this, you are ready to file the application!

People who haven’t done the above don’t have much of a chance of getting accepted. People who have done all this compete against each other for the limited resource of willing mentors and slots.

What we look for in a student is:

  • Communication
  • Considerate: GIMP is a community, not a company; we value good people being nice to each others more than the most talented jerks.
  • Initiative: we welcome questions, yet we also value independance and ability to make decision and researches beforehand.
  • Good understanding of either GIMP or your project or both: it can just mean that you have the will to learn and to research.
  • Knowledge and experience of coding: GIMP is mostly written in C, though depending on your project, you might have to use other languages (there are a few pieces of code in C++, plug-ins in Python or Script-fu/Scheme, some internal scripts in Perl or Python, and so on). We don’t require you to be experts but to be willing to learn.
  • Experience with GTK, GLib, GObject and/or GEGL is a plus.
  • If you are implementing a graphical algorithm, then some knowledge of the algorithm, or at least about general computer graphics/image manipulation, is obviously recommended (or again a strong will to learn).

Project ideas and past projects

The following link lists ideas which are generally considered as good this year and are recommended for students. Note however that students are strongly encouraged to come up with their own project — this list is not exhaustive.

Note also that a submission which is just a copy-and paste job of one of these suggestions is not likely to be accepted.

Feel free to also browse the past list of projects realized by interns.