Hi everybody, I have written a first draft of our answers to Google Summer of Code mentoring organisation application.
I would love to have your comments and criticism about it, especially your criticism because I want to maximise our chances of getting GSoC seats! http://wiki.darcs.net/index.html/GoogleSummerOfCodeMentoring The application period is from 9-13 March. I aim to send this off by the 11th latest. Thanks, Eric PS. Malcolm, one of my fears is that my attempt is too long-winded. What do you think? -----------------------8<------------------------------ 1. Describe your organization. * Darcs is a free, open source distributed revision control system. It is based on an advanced 'theory of patches' and is written in Haskell. * The darcs team supports the continued development of darcs by hosting the official darcs repository, website and bugtracker; and by organising regular darcs coding sprints, performing fundraising and otherwise seeking ways to increase the participation of darcs users in development. 2. Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2009? What do you hope to gain by participating? * More time to hack on darcs! * We love darcs. We think it is unique in the revision control world because it uses the full patch history to get operations like merging and partial undos exactly right. But we also know that it has a lot of warts: the "patch theory" is still a work in progress, it has not yet been optimised to deal with large repositories, and it's still a little behind in GUIs and web interfaces. * These are things that that take a lot of time and concerted effort to work on, which is why we're so excited by the opportunity that a GSoC project would provide. Our goal is to create as much space as possible for us to work on darcs, for example, by getting "20% time" arrangements with our employers, holding biannual darcs hacking sprints, cooperating with lecturers to develop student projects, and actively participating in programs like Google Summer of Code. In the bigger picture, we hope that the darcs project can be a regular participant in the Google Summer of Code program. 3. Did your organization participate in past GSoCs? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation. * No. But we have had a successful project under the umbrella of the Haskell.org, Jason Dagit, 2007 mentored by David Roundy 4. If your organization has not previously participated in GSoC, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)? * No 5. What license(s) does your project use? * The GPL. We are also interested in spinning out or rewriting some of our our code as standalone libraries, for which we may decide that the BSD3 license is most appropriate. 6. What is the URL for your ideas page? * http://wiki.darcs.net/index.html/GoogleSummerOfCode 7. What is the main development mailing list or forum for your organization? * [email protected] * http://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/darcs-users 8. What is the main IRC channel for your organization? * #darcs on irc.freenode.net 9. Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now. * We will be using the Haskell.org template http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/summer-of-code/wiki/StudApply2008 10. Who will be your backup organization administrator? Please include Google Account information. * Ganesh Sittampalam 11. Who will your mentors be? Please include Google Account information. * Eric Kow - eric.kow * Ganesh Sittampalam ganesh.sittampalam * Ian Lynagh igloo earth.li * Kido Takahiro - shelarcy 12. What criteria did you use to select these individuals as mentors? Please be as specific as possible. * Eric is the darcs project maintainer and has time specifically set aside in his week for working on darcs. * Ganesh and Ian are very experienced Haskell programmers, and has made substantial contributions to darcs and darcs theory. * Kido is an active member of the wxHaskell member and would be extremely helpful for any projects that involve build a darcs graphical user interface. 13. What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students? * We will work the same way as the Haskell community. We will choose students who are reliable in the first place. Also, we will expect our students to produce a weekly progress report, chasing after a week and dropping them after two weeks. 14. What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors? * Each project will have a backup mentor. If this is not enough, we will call on the wider darcs and Haskell community 15. What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program? * Before - if they aren't already regulars, we will invite our students to participate in the #darcs channel, where they can interact with the community and get a guided tour of the source code. * During - we will encourage them to blog their progress (which will appear on http://planet.darcs.net). Also, our Darcs Weekly News editor will keep in touch with them and produce regular summaries of their work. * After - patches which are related to the student's work would definitely go their way. We'll also work on making them part of the darcs team, as below. 16. What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes? * The satisfaction of your getting your code in darcs, something that real people rely on is quite addictive. At least, that's how some of us got started. * We will also engage the students more actively by inviting them to our darcs hacking sprints (and helping to pay for their travel if we have the funds). We will also try to involve them in darcs team jobs. For example, we have a Review Team which we rely on to check all our incoming code. Students would be encouraged to participate in this team. -- Eric Kow <http://www.nltg.brighton.ac.uk/home/Eric.Kow> PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9
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