Hi everyone, I am one of the lucky few GSOC'ers. Personally, I really don't mind any way of contribution, I am grateful for any way the community lets me contribute. Agreed, patches will be extra work, but will probably make the work noticed more than some messages in the SVN logs.
About the "honor" of becoming a committer (be it temporary or not): I understand that the ASF is built on "Meritocracy", potential committers have to earn the right of being one. If you think about it, how many people who may want to become committers actually do? Now hold this number against 9000 application to the 410 GSOC spaces... I think being selected for GSOC in the first place is a great honor in itself, but I think it also does bring some merit with it which may, to some extend, contribute to potential committer karma. ... and therefore also to a temporary apache account? I do realize though that there is a fair deal of community experience involved in becoming a "real" committer, which of course I am striving for as well. So, Google pushing students into this community is circumventing the normal process, which goes against the community, but blocking their efforts may be frustrating to the students as well. Personally, I don't think anyone accepted to GSOC signed up only for the money (which gives everyone in the program a huge headache because of US tax regulations, but that is another story), but because they wanted to contribute and did not have the resources to do so before. Imagine you would be one of the GSOC'ers, wouldn't you be at least a little disappointed if the same organization which picked you for the project doesn't reciprocate in any way, however small? Sorry, I wanted to avoid making a case for my own kind. I just wanted to convey both sides of the story. ;) Best regards, Max Pfingsthorn -----Original Message----- From: news [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jorg Heymans Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 12:37 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: community input on the GSoC Torsten Curdt wrote: > > On the other hand providing svn commit access > also means handing out an @apache.org address > (required for technical reasons) and (to some extend) > access to the apache infrastructure. Not everyone is > really excited about that. Less for security reasons, > but more how it could be perceived by the community. > > Some of us fear that giving away an @apache.org > account (although it is restricted) might produce > feelings of disappointment in people who already > contributed to the community and who are on the > committer radar already. I don't see how this should affect people "on the committer radar". If you're on the "committer radar" you'll perfectly understand what GSOC is and does and what the goals of the project are and how it really can benefit cocoon. > > Some fear it could be perceived we are giving away > this "honor" now for less (...although providing svn > access and the @apache.org address does *not* mean > the students magically become committers ...they'd > only get a *limited* and *temporary* access to a > separate part of our repository. There are no usual > committer privileges associated with this. No > voting rights, etc) I wouldn't rate contributing to cocoon via GSOC less than contributing through normal patches. So IMO the "honor" (even though temporary) is equally deserved here. > o give them limited svn access yes > - give them a full address ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) yes > - add a prefix to the address ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) don't see why but then again why not Is having a separate branch per GSOC project an option? That way they can play all they like, all it would need is a few days of integration maybe at the end of the project. Repository permissions are clearer, and anyone interested in the progress would just need to check out the appropriate branch. I'ld say we make it as easy as possible for these guys to get motivated and to contribute in the most efficient way. Regards Jorg
