Arshad,
As you say, this is your first experience. Oleg explained that we actually had to process dozens of applications. So, in the end, that's also life. Your proposal was definitely correct, but as we also had only a few slots allocated by Google (independently of us), we had to make some hard choices. I'm sure you understand you're not the only student whose proposal has not been accepted. See inline below. 2016-04-23 1:50 GMT+02:00 Arshad Khan <[email protected]>: > Hello, > > I want to ask some questions regarding the major concerns that you listed > in the email about my gsoc proposal. > > > lack of the new features (mostly redesign/styling focus) >> > > I had two major points in my mind i.e., usability and consistency. I did > not wanted to make unwanted changes to make something new. Configuration > section and Plugin section were the two main focus and as far as plugin > manager is concerned I had really tried to make it much more compact and > for configuration section I really believe that Gus Reiber design was good > and I accepted that. Jenkins is complex application and changing things > very much may affect its flow and cause problems. At the end of day, I did > what I felt right but if proposal was lacking this point then why there > were no suggestions given. > > unclear changes scope > > > If these were the issues that you see then why don't you or anyone else > from jenkins, mentioned it when proposal were being reviewed on the basis > of their quality and scope. I attended all the office hours meetings and > tried to get maximum feedback about my proposal everytime and changed my > proposal accordingly, asking (especially Oleg) whether there were some > things that my proposal is missing. You said to draft the proposal after > the first look. > What you have to understand is that, though Oleg handled much of the administrative task of GSoC (thanks again for that, Oleg), he's not the only one involved at all. We were roughly between 10 and 20 people discussing and "voting" on proposals. So, you did receive many comments, and you handled some of them, but in the end it's your proposal, and some of our comments wouldn't necessarily get an agreement among all the contributors. So that's why it was up to you to decide where you wanted to go. And anyway, as there were competing proposals, that wouldn't ever guarantee anything. Also, while Oleg tried to sum up the reasons for your proposal not being accepted, there are probably also many other ones not listed/listable. Many of them being a complex mix of discussions and so on and in the end being impossible to sum up... > > private messages to mentors after several recommendations to use public >> channels > > > I send most of the private messages to you asking about proposal and all > the stuff where I faced some sort of difficulty. When I was looking for a > mentor for jenkins 2..0 project then I tried to contact R.Tyler Croy, > Daniel Beck and other mentors asking them for mentorship via emails and > irc. I was very motivated to work with jenkins that's why I send then > private mails so that my message get heard atleast. > Yes, but many of us told you indeed that's not how it works. Many times. We all participate here on our free time. So, reading a mailing list is just different than receiving a private email about building Jenkins or the likes. I would never have seen an issue if your private questions had been about how to handle engaging with the community, or things along that. Anyway, that's also part of the experience you gathered here IMO. > I tried to get some help on private IRC chat and got scolded for pinging > in person. I wish I would have got scolded much earlier or my mentor had > mentioned this point very strictly if this thing values so much. Every > single message was about jenkins or asking for help. > Now I learnt it the hard way that talking openly values so much but one > thing that keep* I dont see any open talk about project or any > contribution from the student that got selected.* I think, I learned > another lesson here that *valuable*-contributions, motivation and > commitment are not the things that counts but the abiding rules count much > more in Jenkins OSS. > On the motivation and commitment, you are wrong. That counted a lot when discussing and voting on your proposal. But as you may imagine, that cannot be the only parameter. You were indeed among the only students having started to work on the project before the result. And that was clearly something we took positively in account for your proposal compared to others. As for the other students, you are right, I for one would indeed have liked to also see some form of pre-commitment from the students, like yours. But it's also much more complex than that obviously, like we human are. Motivation and commitment DO count, really, a lot. Respecting governance/"abiding" rules also does. And here, we are not even talking about Jenkins rules, but opensource projects at large IMO. All that helps create a network of trust and so on. > balancing between WebUI and website projects > > > I tried to contribute to jenkins in any possible way long time before > Oleg send mail to all gsoc students to contribute to jenkins in any > possible ways. Theme of web ui project was UI improvements and I saw > website's bad UI as a good opportunity to portray my skills that I can do > the things that I had written in my proposal. I dont know how others > perceived it. When I have drafted proposal for only one project then why I > would be interested in doing some other project and long after that comes > the point of balancing. I tried to ask some important things and avoid > silly questions, but unfortunately vice-versa happened. I was learning > jelly, xml and revising concepts of Js but in mean time I thought it would > be even more better to spend my free time to contribute to jenkins. I did > every single thing that I mentioned in my proposal. > > I made some small tweaks in main jenkins app ui and some other stuff that > I found later in prs of jenkins repo as a improvements and asked Oleg > whether to open PRs for small tweaks or not but no reply came. > See above. Sending those PRs for discussion, or asking the question publicly would have been probably more productive. Also, see above again: many of us spend a part of our *free time* on the Jenkins Project. So, don't be sometimes surprised if you get no answer even on a public ML. I could show you countless emails I spent on the ML (dev or users) where I never get got an answer. That's (OSS) life. The Apache Software Foundation even created the "lazy consensus" term to help with that "natural" behaviour. Sometimes it's just the wrong moment, or you are the only one bothered enough with something, etc. > > I am asking these question for feedback and not from hostility or to make > arguments, this is my raw experience that I had in last one and half month. > I tried my level best and gave 100% from the day I saw jenkins project on > GSoC that's why I really think it is worthy to ask these question. > This is great. Keep working like that, and those 100% will grow in every possible dimensions. You'll understand how things work, technically and socially. Over time, anyway, if you plan over a career in IT, this won't be time wasted. > A last reminder, as we already said many times: anyone is entitled to work on Jenkins, as any OSS project. So, not getting accepted this year does not prevent you or anyone to start or keep working on the project. Anyone is welcome to do so. -- Baptiste PS: * You possibly want to be aware that taking a private message to public is not considered a good practice, if you didn't request the sender's agreement before. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Jenkins Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/jenkinsci-dev/CANWgJS4No-wOZRE3kEQg_jsXEPp_UMxzv17MtCUjzNKk_mH-Zw%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
