Re: [gentoo-dev] Summer of Code - worth repeating?

[Daniel Robbins]

I agree that we should do it. Looking a the list for 2006, I think we
should steer clear of projects that might require significant
knowledge of Gentoo Linux internals or that may have a lot of
difficult interdependencies and/or coordination. For example, moving
to a different revision control system does not, at least on the
surface, seem like a project that a single SoC student could pull off,
considering the significant amount of coordination required.

I think I good way to start 2007 would be to put together an informal
guide for how to choose appropriate SoC projects. These guidelines
should be geared towards helping to ensure a greater likelihood of
rapid progress and successful completion. My list:

1) Should be a specific, focused problem or challenge

2) Should not have a large number of technical inter-dependencies

3) Should not require significant cross-team coordination/project
management work

4) Anything that touches core gentoo functionality should be done as a
proof of concept, not as an official replacement (changing official
core stuff has distro-wide implications which is not suitable for SoC
efforts and makes the design stage overly complex - "officialness" can
be considered afterwards if the SoC effort is successful)

5) An emphasis on training and mentoring future Gentoo developers to
bring lasting benefits to the project. This means: interesting, fun
projects, good experiences are more important than solving incredibly
thorny problems.

6) The challenges need not be hard - this is not our money so we need
not set artificially high expectations. We should not expect a student
with relatively little Gentoo experience to solve challenges that we
have struggled to find solutions for.

7) Projects should be achievable by a single person working part-time
over 3 months (this *is* summer, after all) and have clearly defined
goals for completion.

-Daniel

On 2/20/07, Christel Dahlskjaer <christel@g.o> wrote:
> Hiya all,
>
> Let's do a quick re-cap of Summer of Code '06:
>
> Gentoo had 14 project slots, out of these fourteen two were on Gentoo
> external Gentoo project which I will leave out of the re-cap.
>
> That leaves us with twelve projects, four of which were being worked on
> by at the time current Gentoo developers. Leaving us eight "newcomers,"
> out of these eight four has been recruited and I belicve an additional
> one is in the recruitment queue.
>
> Some of the projects have been picked up and are being worked on daily,
> some we've had problems getting acceptance for from the projects where
> they would be most suited (Beacon - GDP), and some may have fizzled off
> and died when SoC ended (be that because the student were no longer
> involved and didn't feel that they were welcomed into the community
> post-soc, or be that because it just didn't end up being a small idea
> turned explosion).
>
> Summer of Code 2006 was thrown together practically overnight, we jumped
> onboard after the deadline, by pure luck, and due to lack of planning
> ended up with whatever projects people could think up in no time and
> what mentors felt comfortable mentoring at said time.
>
> Based on the timeframe and having to jump into the deep end I'd say SoC
> was a tremendous success for us, not least as a recruitment tool. And of
> course, it feels great to put something back into the community.
>
> Summer of Code '07 is about to kick off, those of us who participated in
> one form or another last year are pretty geared up to do it again. This
> time around we've got a chance to plan better, apply in time..
>
> Should we SoC? Of course we should! Can we think up projects? Do we have
> willing mentors? Will Google have us once more? (with feeling)
>
> Summer of Code itself should be a lot more organised this year, OSPO has
> put a fair chunk of work into getting things up to speed and has
> listened to the feedback of both students and mentoring organisations
> from last year.
>
> -- Christel
>
>
>
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