[Monotone-devel] Summer of Code 2007

[Nathaniel Smith]

SoC 2007 has been announced:
   http://code.google.com/soc/ (site not yet fully updated)
Probably by this point everyone knows about this, but in case not,
this is Google's project to help students get involved in FOSS
development culture, by funding them to work on some FOSS project for
a summer.  Note that the way to think about this is really "help
introduce someone to FOSS culture and community" not "get 2 months of
free free labor!".  The latter doesn't really work, and the former
actually gets you more and better labor _anyway_ if you can initiate
even one new regular contributor...

We've participated the last two years; that's where a significant part
of the summit funding came from.  It seems like it'd be a good idea to
participate this year too :-).  They're getting more organized,
though, so there's a little more setup work to do than in the past.
We need to send them an application by March 12, and there's a bunch
of stuff needed for it:
  http://code.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=60303&topic=10727

In particular:
  -- Is anyone up to being backup administrator (in case I get eaten
     by a grue)?

  -- Who is willing to be a mentor?  This basically means helping read
     student apps and potentially being a main point of contact for a
     student.  (It also means you can't apply as a student.)

  -- We need a list of project ideas for students to apply under.
     (FWIW, my feeling at this point is that these should _not_
     necessarily be giant, solution-to-everything projects, but more
     the sort of thing that we might expect to complete in a week or
     two of solid hacking.)  I created a totally stub page on the
     wiki:
        http://venge.net/mtn-wiki/SummerOfCode2007
     This is the biggest thing to work on.

  -- We should perhaps think about explicit questions to ask
     applicants when they are applying -- to avoid the problem where
     it is just impossible to tell from their app whether they are
     clueful or not.

-- Nathaniel

-- 
"The problem...is that sets have a very limited range of
activities -- they can't carry pianos, for example, nor drink
beer."