But is Debian an umbrella organization? :P 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.
Cheers, mdb. On 03/10/2018 08:51 AM, Dashamir Hoxha wrote: > Having a look at GSoC guides, I came across this: > > https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/org-application.html#a-note-on-umbrella-orgs > > Google’s program administrators actually look quite fondly on the > umbrella organizations that participate each year. It serves a dual > purpose: it allows Google to accept more organizations in the “space” of > just one, and also gives an opportunity to accept a marginally-topical > org by putting it under the umbrella of a related org. > > This answers some of the concerns expressed earlier in the list, whether > the projects should be closely related to Debian or have no relation to > it. The way I understand it is that there is nothing wrong supporting a > project from outside the organization. Including such projects does not > make the application of an organization weaker, but it actually makes it > stronger. I am glad that people at Google are so reasonable and have > such a great common sense. > > Following is the email (parts of it) that expressed these concerns: > > For what it's worth, I was present at a talk last year in which several > audience members (other than myself) asked several times, in different > ways, what the talk had to do with Debian, and the answer was that it > wasn't actually used anywhere in the project at all, other than that it > was a Debian Outreachy/GSoC project. This was very awkward for the > former interns, and for several members of the audience, and I daresay > left a rather bad impression. > > I don't want to see future interns experience a similar very awkward > moment; I think it could actually work very counter to some of the goals > of Outreachy/GSoC. > > I've thought about this since, and while I haven't come up with a good > hard-and-fast rule to define how related a project is to Debian, I don't > think it makes Debian look good to host a project in which Debian is at > no point involved in the project, other than in name, with the logo on > the slides, and maybe some overlapping of community members. > > Even just using Debian as the development environment is at least > something connected to Debian. > > My assumption and/or preference would be that projects clearly related > to Debian or very directly beneficial to Debian be given first > consideration. Maybe that's a reasonable expectation, maybe not. > > Obviously, it also comes down to who will do the work, and I have made > no proposals this cycle or see myself being significantly involved this > cycle. >