tentwentyfour1024 is standing on the shoulders of giants, more specifically on a massive amount of Free Open Source Software libraries and applications. We’re using Free Software exclusively for all our internal needs and for 95% of those of our customers as well (some just can’t let go of their beloved Windows ;)). Be it GNU/Linux on the servers and workstations, Apache and Nginx for serving our applications, monit, munin and icinga for our monitoring needs, mailman and mediawiki for internal communications and redmine for tracking issues, wherever you look, tools licensed under various flavors and versions of the GPL, BSD, Apache or MIT licenses are the foundations of this company.
And while we’re constantly trying to give back to the various communities, contributing bug reports and patches, helping with documentation, or even releasing many of the tools that we develop for our own use as Free Software, we think that we could do better, release more software, file more bug reports and send many more pull requests from the many forks we created over the past months.
Heck, some of the projects that we modified or extended are just lying around, desperately waiting to get polished, documented and merged back into the upstream project. But as so often, when the shove comes to push, what is lacking most is sweet time. After all – and yes, unfortunately so – our customers usually don’t pay us for contributing to Free Software *wink wink*.
Finally, we admit that we’re not a hundred percent altruistic. We do profit from improving on Free Software projects, but so does anybody else \o/. And that is why we decided to sponsor up to four weeks of development on select Free Software projects that will help tentwentyfour1024 – and hopefully a many like-minded companies and people out there – become better and more efficient in what they do.
Now, four questions surely remain to be answered:
Who? – We’re aiming at pupils and students out of Luxembourg and the greater region. Yes, we’re specifically targeting local youth because we’d like to see this region become more active in software development and ICT in general. Also, it would allow that person to physically drop by our office from time to time, to discuss the project they’d be working on or simply to share a cold, caffeinated beverage.
What? – Although we do have some fair ideas of what we’d like our student to work on, we’re still open to suggestions. If you have a great Free Software project that you’d like to push and that would ideally also be of some use to us, please do suggest it! Also, depending on the time and your proficiency, why limit yourself to a single project? Here are some of our ideas:
The programming languages are up to you… or the software projects you will be working on.
How long? – We’re willing to sponsor one or more students for a total and maximum duration of four weeks during the months of July–September 2015. That could be one student for four weeks, or two students two weeks each, etc.
Sponsoring? – Based on local laws and customs, tentwentyfour1024 suggests to apply the remuneration applicable during a Fixed-term employment contract for pupils/students. Which means a salary adapted to your age, minimum, with an increase to the hourly rate based on your skillset and experience. Additionally, should you accept to join us in our offices every now and then, we will gladly pay for transportation and lunch, once a week.
Are you interested in on working on some Free Software projects all the while getting paid to do so? Any questions? Then hurry up and drop us a line via mail (ul.ruofytnewtnet@cosftt) or Twitter.