Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On 29/02/08 at 23:29 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: On Sat, Mar 01, 2008 at 01:55:49AM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: Note that the whole did last year projects were successful? issue is secondary. Even if all of last years projects produced fabulous results that totally changed the way Debian is developed, I'm still not sure if we should use GSOC to pay current Debian contributors, instead of using it to bring in new contributors. So you think it's better to focus on people who aren't sufficiently motivated to get involved in Debian without being paid to do so? Motivation isn't the only thing necessary to get involved in a free software project. It seems to me that often, people don't participate because they don't find a good answer to the How can I help? question. Debian isn't really good at answering this question, other projects (GNOME, Ubuntu come to mind) do much better than us. I'm not saying that students that were DD did nothing of their time during GSoc, but most of them produced results that were a bit disappointing given what people could have expected from them, mainly because they used their GSOC time to work on other Debian tasks. Do you have any proof at all for that accusation? If so, please share it. Otherwise, I think that people deserve apologies from you right now. Do you have any proof that GSOC students worked 35-40 hours a week on their GSOC projects? You probably don't. So again, no real data to back either claim. We have different opinions, and have to live with it. Where does this 35-40 hours figure come from? From Steve's example in his mail. OK, thank you for this clarification. To let everybody benefit from it, could you please mention in your next d-d-a mail about GSOC that everybody is welcomed as students, not just people not involved in Debian already? I know at least 2 people that could have applied as students last year, but didn't because they thought that GSOC wasn't for them since they were already involved in Free Software development. [...] While the majority of past student participants were enrolled in university Computer Science and Computer Engineering programs, GSoCers come from a wide variety of educational backgrounds, from computational biology to mining engineering. Many of our past participants had never participated in an open-source project before GSoC; others used the GSoC stipend as an opportunity to concentrate fully on their existing open source coding activities over the summer. Many of our graduates have later become program mentors. http://code.google.com/soc/2008/faqs.html#0.1_what_is Sure, but given the stated goals of the Summer of Code (second entry of the FAQ), you will probably agree that confusion is possible. The fact that GSoC has some policies doesn't mean that we could not add additional policies, about preferring people not involved in Free Software already, or asking our students to dedicate some reasonable amount of time to the project. -- | Lucas Nussbaum | [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ | | jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
Lucas wrote: On 28/02/08 at 01:09 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: Yes, subjective to the point of absurdity. If failure is defined in terms of *your* expectations, I don't see how we can even have a meaningful dialogue about it. Note that my main point in the thread is we should use GSOC to get fresh blood in Debian, not to fund existing contributors. The point about Debian GSOC projects have been unsuccessful in the past is totally secondary. I am under the impression that results from last years' GSOC projects weren't up to par with what could have reasonably been expected from them, based on the skills of the students and the time they were supposed to spend on the projects. Maybe I'm wrong, but it will be difficult for you to convince me of that, since we lack data :-) But that's not going to stop you making accusations of previous GSoC students and mentors misleading Google about how time was spent, though. That's *nice* to see. but I think that the evaluation done by the mentors is subjective too. How were the GSOC projects evaluated? I don't know how they were evaluated, but why are you only now asking this question, and of debian-devel instead of the program mentors? Mainly because GSOC 2008 was announced on d-d-a with a reply-to set to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Not quite: * Mail-followup-to: debian-devel@lists.debian.org * Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I deliberately set the Reply-to to point to debian-project, but it seems that the d-d-a list then helpfully added a different target in the M-F-T header... :-( Also, my goal is not to do a witch hunt about last years' projects. Frankly, I don't care. My goal is to see if we can improve things this year (if there's something to improve). If your goal was not to have a witch hunt, then being a *lot* less aggressive and accusatory in your mails here would help. snip I'm not saying that students that were DD did nothing of their time during GSoc, but most of them produced results that were a bit disappointing given what people could have expected from them, mainly because they used their GSOC time to work on other Debian tasks. Do you have any proof at all for that accusation? If so, please share it. Otherwise, I think that people deserve apologies from you right now. Here's a hint: even when working full-time hours on a job (35-40 hours a week, typically), it's entirely possible to do other things in your other time. I have a full-time job working for a company in Cambridge, yet I spend some of my spare time to work on Debian projects, DebConf etc. alongside that. Are you going to accuse me of stealing time from my employer to do them? In past years, the GSoC mentors and admins have ranked student applications based on a few criteria: * How interesting the project is for Debian (and how well it fits with us and our needs) * How good we reckon the student is: motivation, skills, enthusiasm, dedication * Whether or not we have a suitable mentor The ideal student applying will take inspiration from the project ideas we've posted, but will take the extra time to turn those suggestions into their own proposal. Background research and a genuine understanding of the problem are good indicators here. In 2006, only 6 of our allotted 10 projects completed successfully. The Google folks informally told us that that was not good enough - we were well below the average of the programme as a whole. We were allowed back in for 2007, but were only awarded funding for 9 projects of the 20 or so that we asked for. Given that, there was a lot of debate about exactly which projects we should choose. I'm happy that we picked a very good set. There was scope to have made different selections here and there, but the 9 that we chose all succeeded: they all met their goals. I'm not greatly convinced by your arguments that DDs and DMs should automatically be barred from applying for GSoC. In my opinion, they are just as welcome as anybody else. Each application should be evaluated fairly on its own merits. -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.[EMAIL PROTECTED] I've only once written 'SQL is my bitch' in a comment. But that code is in use on a military site... -- Simon Booth -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
* Lucas Nussbaum: I have had a problem with the way GSOC was handled in Debian in the past years. Me too, but I've seen exactly the opposite: someone was funded who wasn't really active in the area of the project where he worked on, and didn't use existing interfaces etc. to implement his project. I had no idea how to follow his progress, or how to make sure that the end result is something we could actually use at Debian (or our users could use, for that matter). And I'm not really concerned by DDs being paid under the project (my usual reservations towards Google notwithstanding). This is Google's project, if they care about conflict of interest, they should investigate them before making a decision. As long as they pick the actual beneficiaries, we don't need to discuss this to death. It's not like they are paying for the addition of a new architecture to the archive or something like that. (By the way, if someone in south-western Germany thinks they have got an interesting summer project for Debian, particularly in the area of security or systems management, they should contact me.) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On 29/02/08 at 19:55 +, Steve McIntyre wrote: Lucas wrote: On 28/02/08 at 01:09 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: Yes, subjective to the point of absurdity. If failure is defined in terms of *your* expectations, I don't see how we can even have a meaningful dialogue about it. Note that my main point in the thread is we should use GSOC to get fresh blood in Debian, not to fund existing contributors. The point about Debian GSOC projects have been unsuccessful in the past is totally secondary. I am under the impression that results from last years' GSOC projects weren't up to par with what could have reasonably been expected from them, based on the skills of the students and the time they were supposed to spend on the projects. Maybe I'm wrong, but it will be difficult for you to convince me of that, since we lack data :-) But that's not going to stop you making accusations of previous GSoC students and mentors misleading Google about how time was spent, though. That's *nice* to see. I think something. You think something else. There's no data to back either claim, so we just have to live with it. Note that the whole did last year projects were successful? issue is secondary. Even if all of last years projects produced fabulous results that totally changed the way Debian is developed, I'm still not sure if we should use GSOC to pay current Debian contributors, instead of using it to bring in new contributors. Also, my goal is not to do a witch hunt about last years' projects. Frankly, I don't care. My goal is to see if we can improve things this year (if there's something to improve). If your goal was not to have a witch hunt, then being a *lot* less aggressive and accusatory in your mails here would help. snip I'm not saying that students that were DD did nothing of their time during GSoc, but most of them produced results that were a bit disappointing given what people could have expected from them, mainly because they used their GSOC time to work on other Debian tasks. Do you have any proof at all for that accusation? If so, please share it. Otherwise, I think that people deserve apologies from you right now. Do you have any proof that GSOC students worked 35-40 hours a week on their GSOC projects? You probably don't. So again, no real data to back either claim. We have different opinions, and have to live with it. Also, I absolutely don't want to start looking in detail at the code produced by last years' projects, and evaluate how much development time was spent on them using the COCOMO model or something else, because it's only marginally relevant to my point (see above). Frankly, if I were in the position of a GSOC student, I would probably find it very hard to work 35-40 hours per week on my project, while I could squash some items off my TODO list. Maybe the whole problem is that I'm less disciplined than our students ;) snip In past years, the GSoC mentors and admins have ranked student applications based on a few criteria: * How interesting the project is for Debian (and how well it fits with us and our needs) * How good we reckon the student is: motivation, skills, enthusiasm, dedication * Whether or not we have a suitable mentor The ideal student applying will take inspiration from the project ideas we've posted, but will take the extra time to turn those suggestions into their own proposal. Background research and a genuine understanding of the problem are good indicators here. In 2006, only 6 of our allotted 10 projects completed successfully. The Google folks informally told us that that was not good enough - we were well below the average of the programme as a whole. We were allowed back in for 2007, but were only awarded funding for 9 projects of the 20 or so that we asked for. Given that, there was a lot of debate about exactly which projects we should choose. I'm happy that we picked a very good set. There was scope to have made different selections here and there, but the 9 that we chose all succeeded: they all met their goals. I'm not greatly convinced by your arguments that DDs and DMs should automatically be barred from applying for GSoC. In my opinion, they are just as welcome as anybody else. Each application should be evaluated fairly on its own merits. OK, thank you for this clarification. To let everybody benefit from it, could you please mention in your next d-d-a mail about GSOC that everybody is welcomed as students, not just people not involved in Debian already? I know at least 2 people that could have applied as students last year, but didn't because they thought that GSOC wasn't for them since they were already involved in Free Software development. Also note that in my initial mail in that thread, I wrote: However, I'm not sure that many DDs agree with this, so maybe we should just aim for *clarification*. So any of the three following solutions would work
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On 2/29/08, Lucas Nussbaum [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Do you have any proof that GSOC students worked 35-40 hours a week on their GSOC projects? You probably don't. So again, no real data to back either claim. We have different opinions, and have to live with it. I don't think there's anything in the GSoC that requires 35-40 hours per week. From some of the postings on the students list last year it seems like 20 hours per week is more common. I think Google leaves this up to the mentoring organization and students to work out for themselves, so if we require 35-40 hours per week, we should obtain assurances from the students during the application process that they have that time to commit. Frankly, if I were in the position of a GSOC student, I would probably find it very hard to work 35-40 hours per week on my project, while I could squash some items off my TODO list. Maybe the whole problem is that I'm less disciplined than our students ;) I was a GSoC student for Debian last year. I estimate I put in close to 35 hours per week, but it may have been closer to 30. This year I don't plan on applying as I'm finishing my thesis, though by your suggestion I would not be accepted anyway as I am at the DAM stage of NM. I also maintain several packages, and was in the NM queue when I applied to GSoC last year. I consider packaging to be a different style of contribution than my GSoC project, as all my packages were just packaging, while my project is my own code (and now a 'native' package). I certainly did work on my other packages during the summer, but just like this work doesn't interfere with school or full-time jobs, it didn't interfere with my GSoC project. That's just me though, and I can certainly see how a student who's also a Debian contributor could be sidetracked by other things. I think it's up to the mentor and others (maybe admins) to make sure the student does not get sidetracked, and to end the project if this happens all the time. However, I don't see the need to ban DDs from the GSoC, as my previous packaging and Debian experience was essential to completing my project. Cameron -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On Sat, Mar 01, 2008 at 01:55:49AM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: Note that the whole did last year projects were successful? issue is secondary. Even if all of last years projects produced fabulous results that totally changed the way Debian is developed, I'm still not sure if we should use GSOC to pay current Debian contributors, instead of using it to bring in new contributors. So you think it's better to focus on people who aren't sufficiently motivated to get involved in Debian without being paid to do so? I'm not saying that students that were DD did nothing of their time during GSoc, but most of them produced results that were a bit disappointing given what people could have expected from them, mainly because they used their GSOC time to work on other Debian tasks. Do you have any proof at all for that accusation? If so, please share it. Otherwise, I think that people deserve apologies from you right now. Do you have any proof that GSOC students worked 35-40 hours a week on their GSOC projects? You probably don't. So again, no real data to back either claim. We have different opinions, and have to live with it. Where does this 35-40 hours figure come from? 10. How much time is required to participate as a student in Google Summer of Code? The amount of time you will need depends on both the scope of your project and the requirements of your mentoring organization. While your organization may offer some flexibility around milestone completion dates, you should expect your project to be your primary focus this summer. If you have a great internship starting soon or you're planning a month long backpacking trip, you likely won't be a good candidate for the program. http://code.google.com/soc/2008/faqs.html#0.1_student_time I seem to be pointing to the GSoC FAQ a lot in this thread. Have you read it? Is there some other documentation from Google that contradicts it? I certainly never got the impression that GSoC students were expected to treat it as the equivalent of a full-time job. Also, I absolutely don't want to start looking in detail at the code produced by last years' projects, and evaluate how much development time was spent on them using the COCOMO model or something else, because it's only marginally relevant to my point (see above). And only marginally relevant to Google's standards for participation in GSoC, but you managed to turn this into slander against the people involved all the same. OK, thank you for this clarification. To let everybody benefit from it, could you please mention in your next d-d-a mail about GSOC that everybody is welcomed as students, not just people not involved in Debian already? I know at least 2 people that could have applied as students last year, but didn't because they thought that GSOC wasn't for them since they were already involved in Free Software development. [...] While the majority of past student participants were enrolled in university Computer Science and Computer Engineering programs, GSoCers come from a wide variety of educational backgrounds, from computational biology to mining engineering. Many of our past participants had never participated in an open-source project before GSoC; others used the GSoC stipend as an opportunity to concentrate fully on their existing open source coding activities over the summer. Many of our graduates have later become program mentors. http://code.google.com/soc/2008/faqs.html#0.1_what_is -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 01:53:17PM +, Jon Dowland wrote: On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 09:42:17AM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: (1) Forbid DDs and people in the NM process waiting for FD/DAM to apply as students. What if we do this, and still do not get many new people applying? How about a policy of prioritising non-DD/NM/DM/whatever contributions, rather than outright forbidding established people? Uh, applicants who're already familiar with the project (both Debian and the specific GSoC project they're applying for) have a much better chance of success; applicants who are already DDs have a much easier time actually contributing than people who aren't. Hamstringing ourselves and our applicants by discouraging prior involvement is crazy. For comparison: I mentored the same project in 2006 and 2007 with different students; the 2006 student unfortunately wasn't able to get anywhere; the 2007 student has been involved in Debian as a sponsored package maintainer for a while that happened to be related to the topic, worked on academic research also related to the topic, and at the end of the summer was was one of the test cases for deployment of Debian Maintainers; he was impressively successful at the GSoC task and has been continuing with it since then. Sorry, but preferncing people with no experience or involvement is a *completely* backwards approach, however you water it down. That said, GSoC is meant to be about *learning* and *getting people involved* in the project and mentorship, so a student who's already really experienced with Debian will still need to find some area that they don't already know inside and out, aren't already involved in completely, and can find someone who knows more about it than they do to act as their mentor. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 09:17:56AM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: I really can't figure out what you're saying, here. AFAICS, we had significantly *better* results when choosing GSoC projects submitted by existing Debian contributors. Where are these failures you're talking about? My definition of failure is: (what was achieved) (what I expected to be achieved, given the skills of the people assigned and the time they were supposed to spend on the project). That's of course subjective, Yes, subjective to the point of absurdity. If failure is defined in terms of *your* expectations, I don't see how we can even have a meaningful dialogue about it. but I think that the evaluation done by the mentors is subjective too. How were the GSOC projects evaluated? I don't know how they were evaluated, but why are you only now asking this question, and of debian-devel instead of the program mentors? This seems like a question that ought to be asked of the relevant parties *before* declaring that Debian's participation in GSoC has been a failure. An objective metric for success and failure is accomplished the goals that were stated at the beginning of the project. Another is produces working code. I think these are the most important objective metrics for success, and it's my understanding that by these standards, Debian's participation in the 2007 GSoC was a success. There may be other objective metrics to consider; yet I don't see any way that the *students* should be judged to have failed if they met the goals that were agreed to up front, whether or not they met *your* expectations of output. The latter might indicate that the mentors failed to set appropriate goals, but that's an entirely separate question. Were they given goals to fullfill? We probably need to improve the descriptions of the projects a bit, so people know a bit more what they are expected to do. Again, questions that should be directed to the GSoC admins and/or mentors. But this is also addressed in the GSoC FAQ: 10. Will a student receive the stipend if the organization does not use her/his code? As long as the goals listed in a student's accepted application are met according to the judgment of her/his mentoring organization, the student will receive the stipend whether or not the project uses the code produced. http://code.google.com/soc/2008/faqs.html#0.1_stipend_code But the evaluations of the students' projects are not public in nature. It's up to Debian's GSoC admins to decide how much detail to share with you; I don't think it would be appropriate to make students have to answer to all 1000+ DDs for their GSoC work, whether or not the students are themselves DDs. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On 28/02/08 at 01:09 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 09:17:56AM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: I really can't figure out what you're saying, here. AFAICS, we had significantly *better* results when choosing GSoC projects submitted by existing Debian contributors. Where are these failures you're talking about? My definition of failure is: (what was achieved) (what I expected to be achieved, given the skills of the people assigned and the time they were supposed to spend on the project). That's of course subjective, Yes, subjective to the point of absurdity. If failure is defined in terms of *your* expectations, I don't see how we can even have a meaningful dialogue about it. Note that my main point in the thread is we should use GSOC to get fresh blood in Debian, not to fund existing contributors. The point about Debian GSOC projects have been unsuccessful in the past is totally secondary. I am under the impression that results from last years' GSOC projects weren't up to par with what could have reasonably been expected from them, based on the skills of the students and the time they were supposed to spend on the projects. Maybe I'm wrong, but it will be difficult for you to convince me of that, since we lack data :-) but I think that the evaluation done by the mentors is subjective too. How were the GSOC projects evaluated? I don't know how they were evaluated, but why are you only now asking this question, and of debian-devel instead of the program mentors? Mainly because GSOC 2008 was announced on d-d-a with a reply-to set to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Also, my goal is not to do a witch hunt about last years' projects. Frankly, I don't care. My goal is to see if we can improve things this year (if there's something to improve). This seems like a question that ought to be asked of the relevant parties *before* declaring that Debian's participation in GSoC has been a failure. I never said that. An objective metric for success and failure is accomplished the goals that were stated at the beginning of the project. Another is produces working code. I think these are the most important objective metrics for success, and it's my understanding that by these standards, Debian's participation in the 2007 GSoC was a success. There may be other objective metrics to consider; yet I don't see any way that the *students* should be judged to have failed if they met the goals that were agreed to up front, whether or not they met *your* expectations of output. The latter might indicate that the mentors failed to set appropriate goals, but that's an entirely separate question. I was not aware that all of last year's projects were succesful (by the mentors' metrics). Am I allowed to change what I wrote in a previous mail? I'd like to substitute: I'm not saying that students that were DD did nothing of their time during GSoc, but most of them failed their projects With: I'm not saying that students that were DD did nothing of their time during GSoc, but most of them produced results that were a bit disappointing given what people could have expected from them, mainly because they used their GSOC time to work on other Debian tasks. -- | Lucas Nussbaum | [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ | | jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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 pgpSjKxjhcWxG.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On 28/02/2008, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: 2) | * Inspire young developers to begin participating in open | source development; 3) | * Help open source projects identify and bring in new | developers and committers; 5) | * Give students more exposure to real-world software | development scenarios (e.g., distributed development, | software licensing questions, mailing-list etiquette). Points 2,3 and 5 can be summarized as goal of GSOC is get fresh blood. Only point 1 is about goal of GSOC is to get code written. This is too ambiguous to conclude anything from it. No. 2) is about *development*. Development is not necessarily a part of the usual job of Debian packagers. 5) is also about development. And I really believe that there's a very large gap between packaging and developping. Of course that depends on the packages, the packagers, and so on. But in the cases you try to address, it looks like glibc or X hackers aren't concerned. You also don't speak about 4) at all. Pointers? Ahah, no, you already said you haven't got any. It would be a good idea to ask jvm, ana, marga, tincho and lamby about their opinion on that topic. Looks to me like the very first thing you should have done. 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? Gah, you discovered my evil plans :-) I don't find that funny. At all. -- Cyril Brulebois pgpoGJUuUPPma.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On 28/02/08 at 11:36 +0100, Cyril Brulebois wrote: On 28/02/2008, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: 2) | * Inspire young developers to begin participating in open | source development; 3) | * Help open source projects identify and bring in new | developers and committers; 5) | * Give students more exposure to real-world software | development scenarios (e.g., distributed development, | software licensing questions, mailing-list etiquette). Points 2,3 and 5 can be summarized as goal of GSOC is get fresh blood. Only point 1 is about goal of GSOC is to get code written. This is too ambiguous to conclude anything from it. No. 2) is about *development*. Development is not necessarily a part of the usual job of Debian packagers. Remember that those goals apply to all participating organizations, not only to Debian. I don't think (but I might be wrong) that (2) should be read as: Inspire young developers to begin participating in open source development (as opposed to packaging, documentation, translation). I think that development should be understood as something general. In Debian, I think that packaging is usually considered development. Or many of us are debian packagers, not debian developers :-) 5) is also about development. Indeed, more exposure could be understood as more exposure than they currently have. But really, I'm not so sure that's the case. You also don't speak about 4) at all. Because (4) doesn't seem relevant to the current discussion? Pointers? Ahah, no, you already said you haven't got any. It would be a good idea to ask jvm, ana, marga, tincho and lamby about their opinion on that topic. Looks to me like the very first thing you should have done. Who said I didn't? But maybe it was in private IRC discussions/mails. And maybe I didn't talk to all of them about that neither, so I'm biaised. 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? Gah, you discovered my evil plans :-) I don't find that funny. At all. I understand that you are frustrated by the current state of DAM (Cyril has been waiting for DAM to review his application for more than 3 months). I am, too (in fact, I think that our inability to give accounts to some of our most active contributors is one of the biggest problem in Debian currently). But please don't let this reflect too badly on your state of mind. I think that your tone in some mails of this thread has been unnecessarily agressive. -- | Lucas Nussbaum | [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ | | jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On 28/02/08 at 10:54 +0100, Cyril Brulebois wrote: 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”. Points 2,3 and 5 can be summarized as goal of GSOC is get fresh blood. Only point 1 is about goal of GSOC is to get code written. This is too ambiguous to conclude anything from it. 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. It would be a good idea to ask jvm, ana, marga, tincho and lamby about their opinion on that topic. 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? Gah, you discovered my evil plans :-) -- | Lucas Nussbaum | [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ | | jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On 28/02/2008, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: Who said I didn't? But maybe it was in private IRC discussions/mails. And maybe I didn't talk to all of them about that neither, so I'm biaised. Because you said that your previous claims were based on your personal impressions rather than anything else? Why didn't you provide us with info/pointers, then, instead of “It would be a good idea…”? It would be nice to stop using maybe's. I understand that you are frustrated by the current state of DAM (Cyril has been waiting for DAM to review his application for more than 3 months). I am, too (in fact, I think that our inability to give accounts to some of our most active contributors is one of the biggest problem in Debian currently). But please don't let this reflect too badly on your state of mind. My state of mind is “nothing too dramatic”. I think that your tone in some mails of this thread has been unnecessarily agressive. I think that your trying to keep almost-DD's out of GSOC for bogus reasons has been unnecessarily aggressive. -- Cyril Brulebois pgpc67crjt6XN.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 09:42:17AM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: I have had a problem with the way GSOC was handled in Debian in the past years. Many of the students that were selected were already well-known Debian contributors or developers. The first problem with that is that some of As one of the admin last year, and also as a mentor which had has his student a Debian contributor (which indeed led to an unsuccessful project IMO), I fully agree with this problem of yours. Also, on a more general basis, I (now) agree that the principle should be let's use GSoC for attracting new contributors, not to pay who is already a contributor. (1) Forbid DDs and people in the NM process waiting for FD/DAM to apply as students. I'm not sure we will be able to reach a consensus on this, but my vote would be for this point. Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli -*- PhD in Computer Science ... now what? [EMAIL PROTECTED],cs.unibo.it,debian.org} -%- http://upsilon.cc/zack/ (15:56:48) Zack: e la demo dema ?/\All one has to do is hit the (15:57:15) Bac: no, la demo scema\/right keys at the right time signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
(1) Forbid DDs and people in the NM process waiting for FD/DAM to apply as students. I'm not sure we will be able to reach a consensus on this, but my vote would be for this point. Seconded. :) Greetings Winnie Cheers. -- .''`. Patrick Winnertz [EMAIL PROTECTED] : :' : GNU/Linux Debian Developer `. `'` http://www.der-winnie.de http://people.skolelinux.org/~winnie `- Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 09:55:23AM +0100, Patrick Winnertz wrote: (1) Forbid DDs and people in the NM process waiting for FD/DAM to apply as students. I'm not sure we will be able to reach a consensus on this, but my vote would be for this point. I'm not completely persuaded this is correct. Someone should explain why an existing contributor does not concentrate his/her efforts on the choosen project instead of wasting time in other tasks, and why a new contributor should not do that. I think it is a management problem, not a choice of contributors. -- Francesco P. Lovergine -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
Hey, (1) Forbid DDs and people in the NM process waiting for FD/DAM to apply as students. I'm not sure we will be able to reach a consensus on this, but my vote would be for this point. I'm not completely persuaded this is correct. Someone should explain why an existing contributor does not concentrate his/her efforts on the choosen project instead of wasting time in other tasks, and why a new contributor should not do that. I think it is a management problem, not a choice of contributors. Mh.. yes this is correct. But this is not the reason why I seconded this.. I seconded this as the Google Summer of Code is meant for people to get in touch with open source projects and to get new contributors. And someone who waits for FD/DAM or is already a DD is not really new to debian. Just my 2c. Greetings Winnie -- .''`. Patrick Winnertz [EMAIL PROTECTED] : :' : GNU/Linux Debian Developer `. `'` http://www.der-winnie.de http://people.skolelinux.org/~winnie `- Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On Wed, 27 Feb 2008, Francesco P. Lovergine wrote: I'm not sure we will be able to reach a consensus on this, but my vote would be for this point. I'm not completely persuaded this is correct. Someone should explain why an existing contributor does not concentrate his/her efforts on the choosen project instead of wasting time in other tasks, and why a new contributor should not do that. I think it is a management problem, not a choice of contributors. I partly agree here. For instance it might be hard to find out a reasonable task that fits the skills and interests of the student out of the pure description if he is not involved in Debian before. I would not have a big problem if a non-DD (well, I agree that DDs should rather work as mentor instead as students) takes over a job in Debian that was started before but does not approach as it should be because people are occupied by other things. I would regard GSoC as a reasonable means to stress the tasks we would really like to have done and encourage people to tackle them. Did I missed something? Kind regards Andreas. -- http://fam-tille.de -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 09:42:17AM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: (1) Forbid DDs and people in the NM process waiting for FD/DAM to apply as students. What if we do this, and still do not get many new people applying? How about a policy of prioritising non-DD/NM/DM/whatever contributions, rather than outright forbidding established people? -- Jon Dowland -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 9:42 AM, Lucas Nussbaum [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 27/02/08 at 00:42 +, Steve McIntyre wrote: Hey folks, Google are running their Summer of Code programme again this year[1], and if we want to take part again we need to apply between March 3rd and March 12th. If we're accepted as a mentoring organisation, then students will be able to apply to work with us up until the 1st April. [2] Hi, I have had a problem with the way GSOC was handled in Debian in the past years. Many of the students that were selected were already well-known Debian contributors or developers. The first problem with that is that some of those students used their GSOC time to work on their usual Debian tasks instead of their GSOC project, leading to disapointing results, unsuccessful projects, less projects being accepted the next year, etc. The other problem is that some Debian developers who could have applied as well didn't, because they thought that GSOC was only for new contributors. I think that GSOC is a great opportunity to get fresh blood inside Debian, and that we should use it for that, not to get funding for usual Debian work. We should have a policy of not allowing existing Debian developers to apply as students. If DDs want to use GSOC to get some work done inside Debian, they could become mentors instead. However, I'm not sure that many DDs agree with this, so maybe we should just aim for *clarification*. So any of the three following solutions would work for me: (1) Forbid DDs and people in the NM process waiting for FD/DAM to apply as students. (2) Make it crystal clear (through a mail to d-d-a) that DDs that are otherwise eligible can apply as well. (3) Compromise: allow current contributors to apply, but, when classifying applications, do it like that: 1. Application from outsider 2. Application from current contributor 3. Application from outsider 4. Application from current contributor [...] What do you think? I disagree with 1). Both 2) and 3) are fine with me. If some projects in the past were a failure, it is solely the problem of the management (=student's mentor:), it doesn't matter if the student was or wasn't a DD. If the student is working on something else (doesn't matter it is also related to Debian), his mentor should fail him in the middle summer evaluation. Where are the results of the last year? I only found this: http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2007 But the information about the results of each project is missing. It needs to be clear from the beginning, that if the student is not going to work on his project as written in his application (as a full time job), he will be failed. And all this information should also be available on the wiki. That wiki says Debian got over 100 applications last year - so I am 100% sure there were many students who would gladly work to meet their applications goals if they were given the chance. I suggest: * Each application needs to be a concrete plan. * Everyone is encouraged to apply. * You get many applications, both from DDs and non-DDs * you sort them from best to worst. * google assigns N slots to Debian. * You choose N students - you can choose the first N, but you can also take into account their past contributions in Debian, you can take into account that we want new blood, etc. You also take into account if there is a mentor available to mentor the application. Many factors influence the result. Disclaimer: I was a mentor last year of 2 students for the SymPy project (informally actually of 5 students, see [1]). I am in NM. And I could be a GSoC student too, but I'll be a mentor again this year for the SymPy project, if any students get accepted of course. :) Ondrej http://ondrej.certik.cz/ [1] http://code.google.com/p/sympy/wiki/GSoC2007 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
Hi Patrick, * Patrick Winnertz [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2008-02-27 12:14]: (1) Forbid DDs and people in the NM process waiting for FD/DAM to apply as students. I'm not sure we will be able to reach a consensus on this, but my vote would be for this point. I'm not completely persuaded this is correct. Someone should explain why an existing contributor does not concentrate his/her efforts on the choosen project instead of wasting time in other tasks, and why a new contributor should not do that. I think it is a management problem, not a choice of contributors. Mh.. yes this is correct. But this is not the reason why I seconded this.. I seconded this as the Google Summer of Code is meant for people to get in touch with open source projects and to get new contributors. And someone who waits for FD/DAM or is already a DD is not really new to debian. The problem with this is that the GSoC is about coding and not about contributing to a FOSS project in general. Being a DD or waiting for FD/DAM does not imply that you have experience in coding on a FOSS project. Kind regards Nico -- Nico Golde - http://www.ngolde.de - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - GPG: 0x73647CFF For security reasons, all text in this mail is double-rot13 encrypted. pgp4e3ucgEshe.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 09:42:17AM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: On 27/02/08 at 00:42 +, Steve McIntyre wrote: Hey folks, Google are running their Summer of Code programme again this year[1], and if we want to take part again we need to apply between March 3rd and March 12th. If we're accepted as a mentoring organisation, then students will be able to apply to work with us up until the 1st April. [2] Hi, I have had a problem with the way GSOC was handled in Debian in the past years. Many of the students that were selected were already well-known Debian contributors or developers. The first problem with that is that some of those students used their GSOC time to work on their usual Debian tasks instead of their GSOC project, leading to disapointing results, unsuccessful projects, less projects being accepted the next year, etc. The other problem is that some Debian developers who could have applied as well didn't, because they thought that GSOC was only for new contributors. I think that GSOC is a great opportunity to get fresh blood inside Debian, and that we should use it for that, not to get funding for usual Debian work. We should have a policy of not allowing existing Debian developers to apply as students. If DDs want to use GSOC to get some work done inside Debian, they could become mentors instead. However, I'm not sure that many DDs agree with this, so maybe we should just aim for *clarification*. So any of the three following solutions would work for me: (1) Forbid DDs and people in the NM process waiting for FD/DAM to apply as students. (2) Make it crystal clear (through a mail to d-d-a) that DDs that are otherwise eligible can apply as well. (3) Compromise: allow current contributors to apply, but, when classifying applications, do it like that: 1. Application from outsider 2. Application from current contributor 3. Application from outsider 4. Application from current contributor [...] What do you think? I noticed some of these also. IIRC most of the past GSOC people were: a) european, b) male c) existing floss contributer d) in Computer science/Informatics (stats about past demographics welcome) So, maybe prioritize people who are not these. FLOSS would benefit from more diversity. Also, GSOC mentions giving the students an opportunity to do work related to their academic pursuits and give students more exposure to real-world development environment. People who are already contributing to Debian already have 'exposure to real-world development environment'. And if someone is a current Debian contributer who joins GSOC, it should not be an existing Debian-related task unless it is related to their academic pursuit. My 2 yen, -K -- | .''`. == Debian GNU/Linux == | my web site: | | : :' : The Universal |mysite.verizon.net/kevin.mark/| | `. `' Operating System| go to counter.li.org and | | `-http://www.debian.org/ |be counted! #238656 | | my keyserver: subkeys.pgp.net | my NPO: cfsg.org | |join the new debian-community.org to help Debian! | |___ Unless I ask to be CCd, assume I am subscribed ___| -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On 27/02/08 at 16:33 +0100, Ondrej Certik wrote: If some projects in the past were a failure, it is solely the problem of the management (=student's mentor:), it doesn't matter if the student was or wasn't a DD. If the student is working on something else (doesn't matter it is also related to Debian), his mentor should fail him in the middle summer evaluation. What if the student worked a bit on his project, but couldn't work a lot because he was too busy working on a huge transition in Debian, or on organizing some Debian conference? You realize that such situations will never be black and white, and that failing a student (who might be a friend, or at least a fellow DD you had some beers with) is a very hard decision to take for a mentor? That wiki says Debian got over 100 applications last year - so I am 100% sure there were many students who would gladly work to meet their applications goals if they were given the chance. So there won't be a shortage of candidates, even if we decide to forbid curent contributors from applying. -- | Lucas Nussbaum | [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ | | jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On 27/02/08 at 11:33 +0100, Francesco P. Lovergine wrote: I'm not completely persuaded this is correct. Someone should explain why an existing contributor does not concentrate his/her efforts on the choosen project instead of wasting time in other tasks Because all DDs are human, tend to have very large TODO list, and if given more time, tend to work on their TODO list first? I'm not saying that students that were DD did nothing of their time during GSoc, but most of them failed their projects, which defeats the purpose of GSoc, makes the GSOC organizers unhappy, and will probably cause Debian to have less slots this year again. , and why a new contributor should not do that. I think it is a management problem, not a choice of contributors. I agree that part of the problem is probably a management problem. However, we cannot blame the managers/mentors here: it's difficult enough to manage people working remotely, possibly in a different timezone, and for free (students are paid for their time, not their mentors). -- | Lucas Nussbaum | [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ | | jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On 27/02/08 at 14:04 +0100, Andreas Tille wrote: I partly agree here. For instance it might be hard to find out a reasonable task that fits the skills and interests of the student out of the pure description if he is not involved in Debian before. Then fix the task or its description? I'm sure we can find plenty of nice improvements to Debian that don't require very high skills or knowledge of the internals of Debian. I would regard GSoC as a reasonable means to stress the tasks we would really like to have done and encourage people to tackle them. I consider that the main goal of GSOC is a social one: let new people learn about free software projects. If we start to depend on Google funding our developers through GSOC to get some important things done, that probably raises some very interesting questions. -- | Lucas Nussbaum | [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ | | jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 7:11 PM, Lucas Nussbaum [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 27/02/08 at 16:33 +0100, Ondrej Certik wrote: If some projects in the past were a failure, it is solely the problem of the management (=student's mentor:), it doesn't matter if the student was or wasn't a DD. If the student is working on something else (doesn't matter it is also related to Debian), his mentor should fail him in the middle summer evaluation. What if the student worked a bit on his project, but couldn't work a lot because he was too busy working on a huge transition in Debian, or on organizing some Debian conference? You realize that such situations will never be black and white, and that failing a student (who might be a friend, or at least a fellow DD you had some beers with) is a very hard decision to take for a mentor? Absolutely, I agree it is not black and white. But this is the responsibility of the mentor. He needs to be the one, who makes this decision and he needs to stand behind this decision. So for example if the student failed to do his GSoC project, but he organized a Debian conference and/or other things, this is what should imho be done: * the mentor should decide if he should fail him or not * at the end of the GSoC, the student (and/or mentor) should write a sum up, and this should be in the wiki. So that google and other people can see it and see for themselves, whether the $4500 from Google were justifyably spent on this project. So to answer your question - yes, I think it is perfectly possible not to do every single bit of the application, but in this case, the mentor needs to make sure he can back up his decision not to fail the student. Publicly. That's all I ask. As the outsider, all I see is this half empty wiki: http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2007 Instead, there should be reasons why each student either succeeded, or failed. Or at least some summary what each student did. The reason why I am saying this is that you are afraid of Google giving less slots each year, because the projects were a failure. So there won't be a shortage of candidates, even if we decide to forbid curent contributors from applying. Probably. But I don't think that restrictions of applicants can help achieve what you want (i.e. projects not being a failure). I believe in the exact opposite - allow everyone to apply, choose the best and require to fullfil the commitments as stated by the students themselves in the application. Plus showing progress of all students publicly. Ondrej -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On Wednesday 27 February 2008 18:52, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: However, we cannot blame the managers/mentors here: it's difficult enough to manage people working remotely, possibly in a different timezone, and for free (students are paid for their time, not their mentors). This is also a matter of policy: organisations get $500 per project, which they can decide for themselves whether or not to pass that on to individual mentors. There are quite some projects passing this $500 on to their mentors directly, and it seems well spent if that increases the success rate. Thijs pgpDYCAtoNHdO.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
* Lucas Nussbaum ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [080227 08:41]: On 27/02/08 at 00:42 +, Steve McIntyre wrote: Hey folks, Google are running their Summer of Code programme again this year[1], and if we want to take part again we need to apply between March 3rd and March 12th. If we're accepted as a mentoring organisation, then students will be able to apply to work with us up until the 1st April. [2] Hi, I have had a problem with the way GSOC was handled in Debian in the past years. so has someone noticed that in contrast to earlier years 100% of the projects assigned to us also finished? I know that among Google itself looks at that number. There is something to be said for people who know the setting they are going to work in. Debian being special and friendly and all could be a huge dissappointment for all those that think they can pick a fight here or start flamewars. :-) /andreas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
I would regard GSoC as a reasonable means to stress the tasks we would really like to have done and encourage people to tackle them. I consider that the main goal of GSOC is a social one: let new people learn about free software projects. If we start to depend on Google funding our developers through GSOC to get some important things done, that probably raises some very interesting questions. Yes, I completely agree with this. Yet my solution is not to restrict the applicants, but rather to demand to follow their own applications, otherwise failing them. Ondrej -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 06:52:56PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: On 27/02/08 at 11:33 +0100, Francesco P. Lovergine wrote: I'm not completely persuaded this is correct. Someone should explain why an existing contributor does not concentrate his/her efforts on the choosen project instead of wasting time in other tasks Because all DDs are human, tend to have very large TODO list, and if given more time, tend to work on their TODO list first? I'm not saying that students that were DD did nothing of their time during GSoc, but most of them failed their projects, which defeats the purpose of GSoc, makes the GSOC organizers unhappy, and will probably cause Debian to have less slots this year again. Er, by what metric have these students failed their projects? The summer has finished, and it's about time I summarised how we got on. We had 9 Summer of Code students working for us, and we had a 100% success rate this year. Woo! Last year we only managed 6 successful projects out of 10, so that's a major improvement. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2007/10/msg1.html I really can't figure out what you're saying, here. AFAICS, we had significantly *better* results when choosing GSoC projects submitted by existing Debian contributors. Where are these failures you're talking about? -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
Er, by what metric have these students failed their projects? The summer has finished, and it's about time I summarised how we got on. We had 9 Summer of Code students working for us, and we had a 100% success rate this year. Woo! Last year we only managed 6 successful projects out of 10, so that's a major improvement. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2007/10/msg1.html Excellent, that email is exactly what I was looking for. I added it to the wiki: http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2007 Ondrej -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On 27/02/2008, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: Many of the students that were selected were already well-known Debian contributors or developers. The first problem with that is that some of those students used their GSOC time to work on their usual Debian tasks instead of their GSOC project, leading to disapointing results, unsuccessful projects, less projects being accepted the next year, etc. Nice claims. Pointers? (1) Forbid DDs and people in the NM process waiting for FD/DAM to apply as students. 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. 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? -- Cyril Brulebois pgpYW2fuA7IMK.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On 27/02/08 at 18:51 +0100, Ondrej Certik wrote: Absolutely, I agree it is not black and white. But this is the responsibility of the mentor. He needs to be the one, who makes this decision and he needs to stand behind this decision. I don't know if that's allowed by GSOC, but taking the final success/fail decision as a group (with some sort of comittee) could really help avoid this dilemma. Seriously, I would hate to be a mentor and have to decide whether I can give $2000 to $STUDENT who: * is an active Debian contributor * did a few things on his project * but clearly didn't do everything that was expected, and didn't work fulltime on it So for example if the student failed to do his GSoC project, but he organized a Debian conference and/or other things, this is what should imho be done: * the mentor should decide if he should fail him or not * at the end of the GSoC, the student (and/or mentor) should write a sum up, and this should be in the wiki. So that google and other people can see it and see for themselves, whether the $4500 from Google were justifyably spent on this project. So to answer your question - yes, I think it is perfectly possible not to do every single bit of the application, but in this case, the mentor needs to make sure he can back up his decision not to fail the student. Publicly. Full ACK. -- | Lucas Nussbaum | [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ | | jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On 27/02/08 at 11:26 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 06:52:56PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: On 27/02/08 at 11:33 +0100, Francesco P. Lovergine wrote: I'm not completely persuaded this is correct. Someone should explain why an existing contributor does not concentrate his/her efforts on the choosen project instead of wasting time in other tasks Because all DDs are human, tend to have very large TODO list, and if given more time, tend to work on their TODO list first? I'm not saying that students that were DD did nothing of their time during GSoc, but most of them failed their projects, which defeats the purpose of GSoc, makes the GSOC organizers unhappy, and will probably cause Debian to have less slots this year again. Er, by what metric have these students failed their projects? The summer has finished, and it's about time I summarised how we got on. We had 9 Summer of Code students working for us, and we had a 100% success rate this year. Woo! Last year we only managed 6 successful projects out of 10, so that's a major improvement. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2007/10/msg1.html I really can't figure out what you're saying, here. AFAICS, we had significantly *better* results when choosing GSoC projects submitted by existing Debian contributors. Where are these failures you're talking about? My definition of failure is: (what was achieved) (what I expected to be achieved, given the skills of the people assigned and the time they were supposed to spend on the project). That's of course subjective, but I think that the evaluation done by the mentors is subjective too. How were the GSOC projects evaluated? Were they given goals to fullfill? We probably need to improve the descriptions of the projects a bit, so people know a bit more what they are expected to do. Also, as I said earlier, in some cases, the mentor might have had a very difficult decision about failing (or not) the student, since the student is probably a friend, who might have badly needed the money, etc. -- | Lucas Nussbaum | [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ | | jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On 27/02/08 at 22:00 +0100, Cyril Brulebois wrote: On 27/02/2008, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: Many of the students that were selected were already well-known Debian contributors or developers. The first problem with that is that some of those students used their GSOC time to work on their usual Debian tasks instead of their GSOC project, leading to disapointing results, unsuccessful projects, less projects being accepted the next year, etc. 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). (1) Forbid DDs and people in the NM process waiting for FD/DAM to apply as students. 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. 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? Someone who submitted some bug reports, but never got involved? 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. 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, 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. -- | Lucas Nussbaum | [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ | | jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Google Summer of Code 2008
On 27/02/08 at 00:42 +, Steve McIntyre wrote: Hey folks, Google are running their Summer of Code programme again this year[1], and if we want to take part again we need to apply between March 3rd and March 12th. If we're accepted as a mentoring organisation, then students will be able to apply to work with us up until the 1st April. [2] Hi, I have had a problem with the way GSOC was handled in Debian in the past years. Many of the students that were selected were already well-known Debian contributors or developers. The first problem with that is that some of those students used their GSOC time to work on their usual Debian tasks instead of their GSOC project, leading to disapointing results, unsuccessful projects, less projects being accepted the next year, etc. The other problem is that some Debian developers who could have applied as well didn't, because they thought that GSOC was only for new contributors. I think that GSOC is a great opportunity to get fresh blood inside Debian, and that we should use it for that, not to get funding for usual Debian work. We should have a policy of not allowing existing Debian developers to apply as students. If DDs want to use GSOC to get some work done inside Debian, they could become mentors instead. However, I'm not sure that many DDs agree with this, so maybe we should just aim for *clarification*. So any of the three following solutions would work for me: (1) Forbid DDs and people in the NM process waiting for FD/DAM to apply as students. (2) Make it crystal clear (through a mail to d-d-a) that DDs that are otherwise eligible can apply as well. (3) Compromise: allow current contributors to apply, but, when classifying applications, do it like that: 1. Application from outsider 2. Application from current contributor 3. Application from outsider 4. Application from current contributor [...] What do you think? -- | Lucas Nussbaum | [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ | | jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
