Tweag Open Source Fellowship

The Tweag Open Source Fellowship program invites you to contribute to the open-source community via a 12-week paid fellowship. Fellows earn compensation is twice the rates specified for the Google Summer of Code projects, as the duration is roughly double the length. Fellows may work remotely or at Tweag's offices in Paris. Selected projects will be supported and mentored by a Tweag-internal engineer or researcher. A typical outcome would be a mix of a coordinated open source contribution, a new tool or prototype, a scientific research paper, or a conference presentation. As long as the project benefits the open-source community, interpreted broadly, it is a suitable project for a Fellowship; research-oriented or risky Fellowships are explicitly permitted.

Individual projects will be selected twice a year with deadlines on March 30 and September 30. Notifications will be within two weeks of these dates. The Fellowship itself must be started within 6 months of acceptance, at a time mutually agreeable to the applicant and the Tweag mentor. It is expected that the Fellow works on the project full-time during the Fellowship; however, the 12 weeks may be interrupted for holidays, for example.

The Tweag Open Source Fellowship is open in many senses of the word:

• The Fellowship is open to all who may wish to apply, regardless of any characteristic you can think of. We explicitly invite applications from populations underrepresented within computer science, as a Fellowship can be a great way to introduce yourself to an open-source community. Fellows may be of any age and at any career stage.
• The products created by Fellows will be open: publicly and freely available. This includes open-source software contributions, but also any research papers or presentations.
• The Fellowship is open all year round. Open-source projects are not just for summers!
• Fellows may contribute to any domain, provided we have the in-house expertise to suitably mentor the project. We welcome new features, bug-fixing, wholly new open-source projects, research papers, infrastructure improvements, documentation, tutorials, etc. The successful application will motivate the project well, but there is no area or form of contribution that is out of bounds. Particularly experienced Fellows may need less mentorship and can push beyond current areas of Tweag's expertise.

Projects

Projects must be aligned with our mission to advance the open source software ecosystem in a sustainable way: We believe that a community of users and developers is essential for the long term development of software. We therefore favour reproducible, shareable and composable contributions, and we favour contributions that align with community interests and integrate in larger software ecosystems.

Your Fellowship application will include a project proposal. Show us that you understand the nature of the project and its implications with this proposal.

Project proposals must be no more than 2 pages long and must have the following sections:

1. Introduction

This section gives a broad overview of the project you wish to complete.

It should be brief.

2. Background

Include links here to set the context of your project. In particular, if

your proposal is a contribution to a current open-source project, include

links so that we can learn more about that project. Tell us what the

current state-of-the-art is in the area and how your idea fits within

existing projects.

3. Motivation

• Why is your project needed?
• Whom will it benefit?
• After your project is complete, how will the result be better than
• what is available now?

4. Project Description

• What will your project entail? Be as precise as possible, while understanding that working out details may indeed be a part of the project.
• What outcomes do you expect from your project? For example, do you expect that your code will be merged in an existing open source project? Or do you expect that you will make a presentation at a conference?
• What is the scope of your project? How do you know when you have finished?
• How will others take over once your Fellowship has completed?

5. Timeline

A Fellowship is 12 weeks long. How do you expect these weeks will break down into the tasks outlined in the Project Description? We know that time estimations are challenging, but we want to make sure that the scope of the proposal is appropriate for the time allotted.

You can append an Annex of arbitrary length to your project proposal that contains detailed explanations.

The questions above are meant to illustrate the goals of the sections, not as a recipe for how to complete the proposal. Write text that addresses these points generally, not point-by-point. You may choose to combine sections, for example, Background/Motivation is a likely candidate for this. Please retain the headers (such as "Background/Motivation") so we know where to look for individual pieces.

Personal Qualifications

Along with your project proposal, in addition to your normal CV, your application will include information about you that is project-specific. It should convince us that you have the experience and background to complete the project as described. It should also demonstrate that the Fellowship experience is fitting for you. We therefore ask for information to place this in the context of your current career and educational goals.

Your personal background document will include the following sections, and is limited to 1 page:

1. Introduction

Who are you? This can be just a few sentences introducing yourself,

likely including your current position (e.g. student, software developer, retiree, etc.).

2. Background

• What experiences have you had that suggest you will be able to complete the proposed project? Feel free to include grades or other performance metrics as appropriate.
• What similar projects have you completed in the past? How have they gone? (It is OK if you have never done something similar. Everyone starts somewhere.)
• What relationships do you have (e.g. with open-source communities) that will help you complete your project? (Again, it is OK to be new to open-source contributions.)

3. Trajectory

• How does this Fellowship fit into your overall picture?
• How will you make time to be a Fellow? For example, will you be changing jobs? Taking
• unpaid leave? Completing the Fellowship during a summer break? Retired?
• How will the Fellowship help you in the next stage of your journey?

4. Working Conditions

• When do you hope to complete your Fellowship?
• Where do you hope to complete your Fellowship? (Fellows are welcome at our headquarters in Paris, France. Tweag is unforutnately unable to pay for relocation or housing, however.)
• What other projects / jobs will you be working on during your Fellowship? (We do expect hours equivalent to full-time employment during the Fellowship, and we forbid having multiple funding sources for the same work.)
• If working remotely, do you have a space where you can work comfortably? Is the network signal strong enough and the space otherwise suitable for video calls?
• Do you have sufficient hardware in order to complete the Fellowship? Tweag is unfortunatley unable to supply laptops or monitors to Fellows.

5. References

• Whom may we contact to learn more about your ability to complete the project? Include not just names, but roles and why their opinion is relevant to this applications.
• Is there any person or organization who must not know about this application?

6. Other Details

Is there anything else we should know about you? For example, if you expect to be on holiday when we are sending out notifications, it would be helpful to know that a response may be slow. Or if there is something that does not fit any of the categories above but should be a part of your application, this is a fine place to put it.

Application Submission

Please submit applications via the form below. We will collect all submissions and review them in the following weeks after each deadline. Applicants will be notified by email. Please write additional questions to fellowships@tweag.io.

If you have any questions about the Fellowship, please drop us a line!

Frequently Asked Questions

• Q: What if I already have a mentor?
• A: That's great! Since we're sure your project is interesting, we at Tweag will want to learn more about it as you complete your Fellowship. You would thus work with a Tweag-internal mentor as well as your current one -- even if you would really be guiding the Tweag mentor more than they guide you.