On Fri, Apr 09, 2010 at 09:44:46PM +0300, "Ionu? C. Ar??ri?i" wrote:
> Hello list,
>
> I'm a final year student in Romania and I've successfully completed a
> GSOC on the Fedora Project last year. I'd love to participate in this
> year's FSC and have been working on a proposal since before the sad news
> about Fedora and GSOC was announced.
Just to summarize for others, Ionut and Toshio and I talked async on
IRC. IMO, Fedora Summer Coding is a chance to solve some of these
scheduling problems, so we don't want to be fixed in stone.
We picked a schedule that moves as fast as we can, so we miss anyone
who needs answers before our schedule gives them, but there is no
reason we can't adjust for people who can adjust forward.
> There's a bit of an overlap between the FSC/GSOC schedule and the
> schedule of Romanian colleges. In Romania, the summer holiday generally
> starts in July, with the new school year starting in October. I know
> quite a few students who couldn't participate in GSOC in the last years
> because of exams. Even so, judging by GSOC statistics, Romania has one
> college rated as 4th for number of students last year and another rated
> 10th for the number of students in 2005-2009 [1].
Those folks must have worked in parallel. I know people have worked
with projects to e.g. take exams in the middle of the first part of
the schedule. Often people actually start coding in advance of the
official start.
That may explain why so many have participated, but that IMO is not
the way the program is supposed to work. There is a lower-pressure
environment between sessions ("summer") that I think is important to
people actually slowing down enough to really get involved in the FOSS
projects.
> So I'm wondering if we can tweak FSC's schedule a bit in order to
> accommodate more people (and make it less stressful for myself :) ).
> I've seen some discussion about an year-round summer coding, but I'm
> wondering if we can do anything for this year as well.
Naturally, it will be easier for organizers if we have a clear
"Northern Summer" and "Southern Summer" events. However, we might not
need as many fixed dates. We could have a large window for each, then
allow each student to adjust with each entor.
> Since the ideas/proposal submitting time has already started and this
> period is free from exams, everyone could submit their proposals now.
> They would get notified of accepted/rejected status by the end of the
> month, but start working at different times. Couldn't we have two
> different periods: the one we have now, and a delayed one (1 July - 15
> September -ish)?
How about if you include your schedule idea in our proposal, and make
acceptance of the schedule part of the proposal?
One reason is, we can't know all the various schedules; the one you
propose works for Romania but may not for other countries. If we
remain flexible, we may find a rhythm that works for the largest
possible audience.
> Or if that fails, I know there was talk about bigger and smaller ideas.
> Could we have half-proposals, with work starting at midterm evaluation
> date and only half the money? I know the RubySOC guys have "Half Project
> Sponsors"[2] which probably makes it easier to get more sponsors, though
> they probably don't also have half-work proposals.
I actually have thought that half-work proposals would make sense,
especially considering if we can raise many sponsors, but haven't
really taken it beyond thought.
> I'm probably seeing this over-simplified (from the student's POV), but
> what are the affected/disadvantaged parties by having two summer coding
> periods? Can't we work with them to make this a more flexible SOC? We
> could also compete better with other SOCs this way :)
It just make organizing more complex, but if enough people are willing
to help with that, it doesn't matter as much. Maybe we'll find that
flexible schedule that works and isn't much more organizing work.
- Karsten
--
name: Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Community Gardener
team: Red Hat Community Architecture
uri: http://TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki
gpg: AD0E0C41
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