Re: updating the project ideas list
I agree to the points that are made here. Even I came to Debian as a
part of GSoC project which was not directly linked with core OS but it
opened so many possibilities for me. I would prefer if we don't
restrict ourselves to particular project and rather involve more
students who really want to step into open source. Being part of GSoC
teaches us what is freedom in code all about, it gives us a platform
to make our voices heard. I agree that many of these projects won't
help Debian OS but it is helping big way in building a community
around Debian which later on might help Debian OS itself.
On Sat, Mar 10, 2018 at 11:26 PM, Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> wrote:
>
>
> 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
>
--
Regards,
Pranav Jain
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