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Re: Google Summer of Code 2008



On 28/02/2008, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> > Nice claims. Pointers?
>
> I agree that this is mainly based on personal perception (but that's
> not really my fault: no final report about what students did (in
> detail) are available).

OK. So you lack info, thus assume people failed. Nice. Steve already
answered about this, anyway.

> > How is this distinction relevant? Isn't that possible to be
> > waiting-for-that-never-coming-DAM-review, student, but also
> > working on various opensource projects, as well as maintaining
> > packages, alone or within teams, working on various areas of the
> > Debian project (e.g. QA, by providing with patches, NMUing
> > packages; or mentoring people with their new or updated packages),
> > at the very same time?
> >
> > I believe it's possible. And I believe you'll find a trivial
> > example.
>
> GSOC != "get funding for existing DDs to do $DEBIAN_WORK". If GSOC
> is only DuncTank 2.0, I think that we could have a nice
> thread^Hflamewar about whether it's good or evil. GSOC is considered
> good by many people because one of its stated goals is to bring
> fresh blood to free software.

I'm not saying that GSOC is about getting funded to do
$USUAL_DEBIAN_WORK, I'm just saying that it's possible to work on very
different areas, and to keep a separation before “usual work” and
“GSOC work”, and that your distinction (early-NM, waiting-forever-NM,
and so on) is totally irrelevant.

BTW, it might be relevant to check GSOC's FAQ to see what it is about.

,----
| Google Summer of Code has several goals:
|
| * Get more open source code created and released for the benefit of
|   all;
| * Inspire young developers to begin participating in open source
|   development;
| * Help open source projects identify and bring in new developers and
|   committers;
| * Provide students in Computer Science and related fields the
|   opportunity to do work related to their academic pursuits during
|   the summer (think "flip bits, not burgers");
| * Give students more exposure to real-world software development
|   scenarios (e.g., distributed development, software licensing
|   questions, mailing-list etiquette).
`----

Source: http://code.google.com/soc/2008/faqs.html#0.1_goals

Please note that it's not only about “bringing fresh blood to free
software”.

> Now, I agree that "fresh blood" is difficult to define. Is someone
> that has been involved a bit in Debian for 1-2 months "fresh blood"?

Again, that's not the (only) point.

> Someone who submitted some bug reports, but never got involved?

Submitting bug reports is IMHO a way to get involved. At least in my
experience, FTWC.

> someone who is very involved in GNOME, but not involved in Debian?
> So my distinction sucks, but I couldn't come up with something
> better that fitted in a line.

There's no line to fit.

> > Now. How come it wouldn't be possible to apply for a GSOC slot,
> > lowering the involvement in one (or more) of the above-mentioned
> > areas, and concentrating on a specific project?
>
> Past years show that this is very hard to do,

Pointers? Ahah, no, you already said you haven't got any.

> but of course it's possible. But that also means that we are
> shooting ourselves in the foot: we are asking someone to lower his
> involvement in some areas of Debian, where we might be depending on
> him. Many Debian teams might not be able to afford to lose an active
> contributor during the summer (just before the lenny release!) so he
> can work on his GSOC project.

Huh? You know about libre arbitre, right? If people apply to GSOC,
their choice. I really don't know why you would forbid them to apply.
So that they keep doing the dirty job before a release?

-- 
Cyril Brulebois

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