Quoting "Tim Retout" <diocles@debian.org>:
[Please excuse the long email. I welcome comments.]
Hi,a lot of helpful technical details, already used for years [1] (though I don't know what PET is), however I still can't see how the 'splitted brain syndrome' is dealt with, the logical problem, i.e. mentee X spends tons of time on package X, and no sponsor addresses their work, otoh mentee's work on package Y (if spent that way) would be processed in a timely fashion. The keyword in my opinion, is 'sensible communication' beforehand, so that mentees have better view how to spend their time, on what packages, bugs, teams, etc.
P.S. I have been co-sponsoring (together with another fellow DD) a handful of c++ dev packages by a non-DD dutch researcher for several years, already. Communication happens completely off-list and without uploads to mentors source package repo, just private mails and vcs.