Re: updating the project ideas list
On 10/03/18 17:52, Molly de Blanc wrote:
> But is Debian an umbrella organization? :P
I agree there is a difference between whether Google sees us that way
and whether we see ourselves that way.
There was a big debate on debian-devel recently[1] about Debian's
relevance because of the problems we have packaging some modern
applications. Being an umbrella organization in GSoC, even if it is
only one of those small foldable umbrellas, could be an interesting way
to do "outreach" and engage with the wide network of people who use
Debian in one way or another.
>
> A big part of answering the question "should this be a Debian project?"
> is practically relevant when it comes times to dispersing resources.
> Without getting into a debate about how much we should ask GSoC for, I
> will say: When it comes to decision time, do we want to use Debian
> resources on something that is only tangentially related to Debian, or
> does not demonstrably add to the project? I think it's really hard to
> justify doing that, and my intuition is to not.
>
Molly, you've mentioned resources before but that means different things
for GSoC and Outreachy.
In Outreachy, it may well be Debian money, although sometimes they have
very generously used central funds to pay extra interns. So I can
understand that you need to be more strict there as an Outreachy admin.
In GSoC, Debian doesn't have to pay and there is actually a small
payment of $500 back to Debian for each project taken on.
The only other resources to talk about then are mentoring and admin
time. I volunteered to be a GSoC admin this time and I am open minded
about supporting a range of students and mentors, even if I don't mentor
myself. As volunteers, I feel each of us can have some discretion in
what we support.
Rather than focusing on whether something is "tangential", I would be
interested in criteria like:
- projects/teams with a good ratio of mentors to students
- similar pool of skills (I notice Python and Ruby are common in many
project ideas and therefore easier to support as a team)
- diversity (both gender and regional) - in 2016 we had 4 women in
Outreachy but only 1 out of 25 in GSoC[1]
- applicant's history with free software (did they ever make a
contribution or volunteer for anything before their GSoC application)
One of our new admins this year, Jaminy, came to Debian through one of
these projects[3] that could be described as "tangential", but she has
remained with the community for a long time. We have had other interns
who worked on core Debian things but then had no further involvement.
Regards,
Daniel
1. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2018/02/msg00295.html
2. https://bits.debian.org/2016/04/welcome-summer-interns-2016.html
3. https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2016/StudentApplications/Jaminy
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