[xwiki-devs] Fwd: Summer of Code Students

An interesting message from a GSoC mentor. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Yuval Levy &lt;goo...(a)levy.ch&gt; Date: Mar 28, 6:03 pm Subject: Summer of Code Students To: Google Summer of Code Mentors List Hello Jan, Galloth &lt;lordgall...(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: We're not looking for mercenaries here, we are looking for committers to join our community which is all about giving and not about taking. Selection for participation in Google Summer of Code is a privilege. We are humbled by Google's generosity toward our project. We are equally humbled by the generosity of all contributors to the community and by the generosity of students who decide to apply. The only feedback I can give specifically to the question you are asking is that you are free to write a proposal and we will consider it like every proposal. Potentially we could even accept you and get you started during the community bonding period. And we could decide toward the end of the community bonding period to ditch you for whatever reason. No money for you then. And let's not forget that we could fail you at mid term and at the end of the program. And you know what? I'm not interested playing this kind of games. Because from your statements I get the impression that once Summer of Code is over you will disappear, and all my efforts and Google's money will have been wasted on paying for some code that we could probably get done faster, better, with less effort and money. My interest is to attract people to stick around in the long term, to see them growing. It's an investment. Like any investment, initially it costs more than it yields. Over time it bear fruits. Your post motivated me to look back, to see how the return on our investment was. I am happy to see: * Ippei (2007) still active on the Mac build despite having joined the workforce. * León (2007) still active on FreePV and applying to VLC this year to add panorama playing capabilities there in a joint project that the two organizations have tried to set up since last year. * Zoran (2007) went on mentoring in 2008 and is still around despite being very busy in his new job. Out of five 2007 students that's not bad. Of the other two students one was a superstar. Her code is great. She has moved on. The other one we had to fail, but it was a good learning experience for both. He completed his 2008 GSoC project with another organization successfully, and we learn to introduce the patch requorement. * Marko (2008) still around, integrated his code long after GSoC was over. * James (2008) still contributing fixes. Integrated his code long after GSoC was over. * Tim (2008) ready to be a mentor or a student this year, depending what occasion arises, and still contributing. Integrated his code long after GSoC was over. * Fahim (2008) still active on his branch with the masking code. It's our shortcoming that his code is not integrated in Hugin yet because we do not really know how to evolve the user interface to make use of the advanced tool he developed. * Onur (2008), who with Zoran has worked on one of the most demanding projects of ours, and is still around but busy with his academic career. Right now we'd need somebody to pull the strings together and bind his project, with Zoran's 2007 project, into the Holy Grail of a patent- free control points generator. Out of five 2008 students. Well, there was a sixth, together with VLC, but he desisted because he got a full time job. We hope to catch up on that project with León who is applying to VLC this year. I rather give one of the slots available to a deserving student - to somebody like Lukáš who was too young for GSoC 2007 and became a frequent contributor and committer without expecting us to be accepted as a GSoC 2008 mentoring organization and without expecting to be selected. Or to one of the students who have shown interest, passion, curiosity and humility (Dev, Irena, Joe, Yulia, and please forgive me if I forgot somebody of those who joined this mailing list in the last week). And I rather give a slot back to Google for allocation to a more deserving student at another project, than waste Google's money and the time of my fellow mentors on somebody who does not seem mature enough in my judgment. Wow, that was a long email! I felt angry when I started the reply. I feel better now. Should I hit the "send" button? I think so. I am still inclined to black-list you, but I may be wrong. Maybe you will see what in your attitude is incompatible with this community? Feel free to come back any time you want, the door is not closed. In the meantime I share this exchange from our mailing list, conveniently stored at <http://groups.google.com/group/hugin-ptx/browse_thread/thread/ e02061a...> with the other mentoring organization. Just that they know who they are dealing with in case you apply there too. Yuv