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Why Isn’t OpenBSD in Google Summer of Code 2017?

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Re: Why Isn’t OpenBSD in Google Summer of Code 2017?

#61

Post by gribbly »

VLM wrote: post #41

Anyone interested in brainstorming how to make GSOC work, as it apparently doesn't? The first thing that comes to mind is pay a stipend to the project and the student. So if the student gets $6K and 99.99% of them skip town at the end of summer no further contact, the project gets nothing but unmaintained code and wasted effort. However... what if the project ALSO got $6K of cold hard cash? Or credit for google servi…

Eh, GSOC is working for a ton of projects, which is why so many projects happily apply each year, and are bummed if they aren't picked.

You seem to draw a conclusion solely based upon GSOC not being a good fit for the OpenBSD devs.

Re: Why Isn’t OpenBSD in Google Summer of Code 2017?

#62

Post by hermitdev »

sverige wrote: post #54
mhils wrote: post #8

I'm a GSoC org admin for a few years now. To be honest, the bureaucracy that comes with GSoC is really negligible from my point of view. The application form is fairly short, the evaluations during the summer are literally done in five minutes... there really isn't that much overhead. The part that takes a lot of time for us is mentoring students. You'll very likely invest more time into the student than it would tak…

"it was too much effort on the part of the foundation organizers mentors to deal with the bureaucracy involved, and we didn't really see enough return in terms of new developers to the project" I don't think Bob's statement is a criticism of the bureaucracy itself, but rather that the amount of time spent on the GSoC project as a whole is better spent doing other things that need doing on the OpenBSD project. He expl…

From what I read, they applied 2 years in a row, and nothing happened. From the link it's not really clear what happened.

> we didn't really see enough return in terms of new developers to the project.

It's not clear in just this context what the author means. Were they looking to add significant numbers of full-time contributors? If so, I don't really think that's what GSoC is about. Isn't GSoC geared towards smaller projects that can nominally be completed in a student's summer break?

I mean, seems to me that expectations on the 2 sides are different: OpenBSD was looking to recruit full-time (I don't mean full-time in the 40-hours a week sense, but rather year-round part-time contributors) vs GSoC looking to fund individual efforts on OSS projects for 3-4 months during summer break.

Am I misunderstanding?

Re: Why Isn’t OpenBSD in Google Summer of Code 2017?

#63

Post by protomyth »

0x6c6f6c wrote: post #59
protomyth wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice project, but a version with college students would probably work better.

At that point it seems like a glorified version of a bug bounty list[1]. The convenience of GSoC is that the students get to intern with pay on open source projects. If squashing bugs is the only goal, then going through their bug bounty lists and getting paid for it really is just picking a company on that list and doing it yourself. However, with a Google program behind it and the company's agreement, I'm sure the…

> At that point it seems like a glorified version of a bug bounty list[1].

I was thinking they would work on one project the same mentorship scheme, but I can see how it might devolve without keeping the education in mind.

Re: Why Isn’t OpenBSD in Google Summer of Code 2017?

#64

Post by reality_czech »

An open source project I am involved with had the same experience. We were expecting to get idealistic young people as students who had a passion for the project. Instead, we got people from poor countries who were doing it for the money and didn't care about the project at all. I understand that this money may do some good and I don't blame the students for going for it, but it really tainted the whole process in my mind.

GSoC also has this this weird master/slave (or if you like, employer/employee) dynamic that is very artificial. If you are a mentor, you are basically a manager for the student. You have to give status reports, feedback, evaluate how they are doing, decide whether to pass or fail them at the end, and so forth. It's very different from how a real open source project operates. If you want to know what being a middle manager operating an outsourced project feels like, then being a GSoC mentor is for you. If that is something you would run screaming from, then I would stay away.

Re: Why Isn’t OpenBSD in Google Summer of Code 2017?

#65

Post by stsp »

hermitdev wrote: post #62
sverige wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it was too much effort on the part of the foundation organizers mentors to deal with the bureaucracy involved, and we didn't really see enough return in terms of new developers to the project" I don't think Bob's statement is a criticism of the bureaucracy itself, but rather that the amount of time spent on the GSoC project as a whole is better spent doing other things that need doing on the OpenBSD project. He expl…

From what I read, they applied 2 years in a row, and nothing happened. From the link it's not really clear what happened. > we didn't really see enough return in terms of new developers to the project. It's not clear in just this context what the author means. Were they looking to add significant numbers of full-time contributors? If so, I don't really think that's what GSoC is about. Isn't GSoC geared towards smalle…

Your impression that nothing ever happened does not align with the facts.

The project applied 2 years in a row, and mentored several students. Some developers mentored more than one student.

https://www.google-melange.com/archive/gsoc/2014/orgs/openbs... https://www.google-melange.com/archive/gsoc/2015/orgs/openbs...

Re: Why Isn’t OpenBSD in Google Summer of Code 2017?

#66

Post by SadWebDeveloper »

0x6c6f6c wrote: post #59
protomyth wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice project, but a version with college students would probably work better.

At that point it seems like a glorified version of a bug bounty list[1]. The convenience of GSoC is that the students get to intern with pay on open source projects. If squashing bugs is the only goal, then going through their bug bounty lists and getting paid for it really is just picking a company on that list and doing it yourself. However, with a Google program behind it and the company's agreement, I'm sure the…

The value of "mentorship" or "internship" at FOSS projects are overrated, most of this projects run without clear goals and improvements are made only by "interested parties" like intel wanting their technologies to run better on Linux or the devs at GitHub optimizing "Git" for the sake of their business operations but yet not a single improvement on the UI side (obviously because it will hurt their business if suddenly people realize how easy could be using Git without GitHub).
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