I completed the application for Google Summer of Code 2010 for DragonFly. Here's hoping we get in again! I'm pretty optimistic we will; if you're a student, start planning now. You can't be _too_ ready.
The text for this year's application is below. It is similar to last years, which I don't remember if I posted... If anyone has suggestions, I can make modifications until the 12th. ------------------------------------------------ Organization Name: DragonFly BSD Description: DragonFly BSD, originally branched from FreeBSD on 2003, is working on a new approach to SMP and other kernel systems to enable an open source Single System Image operating system. Along the way, we've been picking up improvements from other BSDs and generally streamlining the underlying 30-year-old BSD code base, with a preference towards making systems less complex and easier to maintain. Home page: http://www.dragonflybsd.org Main Organization License: New and Simplified BSD Licenses Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2010? What do you hope to gain by participating? We've found two benefits from Summer of Code participation. One is the attention, where Summer of Code work spreads out from the student and mentor activity to other users and developers for DragonFly. It increases the activity level of the overall project, to a greater amount than just the direct participants. The other advantage is that it serves as a starting point for new projects. Major subsystems in DragonFly have been created as part of Summer of Code projects, and more people see this and new projects tend to get started because the idea of starting a new project gets into people's heads. Did your organization participate in past GSoCs? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation. We participated in the 2008 and 2009 Summer of Code projects. We had a few failures, each of which can be attributed to the students biting off more than they could chew. Those students are still active with DragonFly. A number of the projects have become major parts of DragonFly - the LiveDVD project, the port to 64-bit, C99/POSIX conformance, and a dynamic device file system, among others. If your organization participated in past GSoCs, please let us know the ratio of students passing to students allocated, e.g. 2006: 3/6 for 3 out of 6 students passed in 2006. 5/7 in 2008. 4/5 in 2009. Deadline problems seem to be the reoccurring problem; I plan (if the project is accepted) to be much more vigorous in early schedule planning and checkpoints, in an effort to stave off this problem. If your organization has not previously participated in GSoC, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)? Not applicable. What is the URL for your ideas page? http://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/developer/gsoc2010/ What is the main development mailing list for your organization? This question will be shown to students who would like to get more information about applying to your organization for GSoC 2010. If your organization uses more than one list, please make sure to include a description of the list so students know which to use. ker...@dragonflybsd.org (signup information here: http://www.dragonflybsd.org/mailinglists/) What is the main IRC channel for your organization? #dragonflybsd on EFNet Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now. Please note that it is a very good idea to ask students to provide you with their contact information as part of your template. Their contact details will not be shared with you automatically via the GSoC 2010 site. Name: Email: Phone number (include country and area code): Project title: Description of project goals, including details of how the delivered code will operate Project timeline broken down by week, with details on when each feature described in the project goals will be available. Week 1: Week 2: Week 3: Week 4: Week 5: Week 6: Week 7: Week 8: Week 9: Week 10: What additional resources as hardware or software will be needed for this project? Please include or provide links to prior code related to this area of work. We also have a set of standards for the students to follow located on the website: http://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/developer/gsoc2010student/ What criteria did you use to select the individuals who will act as mentors for your organization? Please be as specific as possible: Someone who has been interacting with the DragonFly community for an extended period. This person must have previously participated in technical discussion, and be interested in the direction the project's taking (as opposed to participating to argue it's all wrong.) They also have to be sympathetic to dealing with others. This is very often the same characteristic that leads to someone being given commit access, so an easy shortcut would be to say "usually, but not always, committers." What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students? Maintain frequent contact so that a disappearing contributor can be detected as early as possible. When a contributor does go AWOL, try to contact them via email, though common acquaintances, or if another project member is geographically close enough, in person. Once we get in contact, find out what's up. If the project is salvageable, shape a new schedule and go forward. If the contributor disappears before the halfway point for the session, it's an automatic fail, since it's very unlikely the work can recover at that point. What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors? Pre-emptively: maintain frequent contact with mentors to know when they've disappeared, and contact with the students in case the mentor ceases to interact with them. The students need to be ready to "escalate" as soon as possible. If it does happen: recruit assistance from existing mentors until a new mentor from the existing developers can be found and put into place. Once a new mentor is in place, re-evaluate the student's work schedule and progress in light of the (inevitable) lost time and ability of the new mentor to catch up, and establish goals based on that. We had exactly this happen in 2008, on one of the most complex projects; however, the project was still successful doing the above steps. What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program? Pre-SoC, postings on the mailing list and the DragonFly Digest are there to notify people of DragonFly's (intended) participation in the project. Ideas are posted on the website, and suggestions have been discussed on the DragonFly mailing lists. During the program, frequent communication between mentor and student, between student and SoC coordinator, and with other DragonFly users and developers on both the mailing lists and on IRC is expected. Students are asked to provide reports to the mailing list or by updating a wiki page to show status outside of the plain code. After the project: more of the same. While there won't be the structure of the Summer of Code project, communication about the work being done should continue to draw in the former contributor, especially if we make clear the value of the completed project to the people involved with DragonFly. What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes? The goal is to invest students in the feedback they get, so that interacting with the group becomes a habit that isn't directly supported by the Summer of Code project. We reward contributors by celebrating the work they did, and (whenever feasible) bringing it permanently into DragonFly. Is there anything else you would like to tell the Google Summer of Code program administration team? : The fresh blood? air? thoughts? this has been bringing to DragonFly on a yearly basis is wonderfully refreshing. Backup Admin (Link ID): matthias
