[oi-dev] illumos and GSoC 2012

[Bayard Bell]

Summary

illumos is applying to participate in Google Summer of Code 2012. I will be
serving as org admin, and we need volunteers from the community to serve as
mentors, as well as project ideas. Students will begin showing up the
developer lists shortly, and we hope that community members will engage
them to begin contributing to the project by fixing bite-sized bugs,
learning how to navigate the codebase, and talking about work that needs
done and can be done by a student in the course of a summer. Students will
be treated as regular community members, with all the consideration and
responsibility that entails, and will be expected to engage through regular
community channels (developer mailing lists and IRC channels).

Submit Ideas for illumos Development

We have an Ideas List on
https://www.illumos.org/projects/illumos-gate/wiki/Project_Ideas - but
these are not the only possibilities - we encourage both students and
illumos community members to submit more ideas for projects that need work
and/or you'd like to work on.

Please bear in mind that our students are students. We want to make them
long-term contributors to open-source projects and preferably illumos.
Projects should be demanding but nevertheless pitched as three months of
work that is doable for a student likely making a first, serious
contribution. Students may not have had to work on such an extensive
practical assignment previously. Projects should be conceived at least as
much in terms of pushing the student to grow from where they are into an
open-source contributor as providing a deliverable otherwise aligned with
community priorities.

Work should be able to be submitted and integrated by the conclusion of the
mentorship on August 21.

Community Involvement

illumos is applying as a project, with a deadline of March 9.

By March 17 we will provide links to materials advertising illumos
participation in GSoC 2012. We encourage community members to advertise
these opportunities through appropriate channels. If you have contacts in
university departments that teach potentially qualified students or access
to students through alumni social networks, it would be especially
appreciated if you let them know of our participation and encourage them to
make it known to their students.

GSoC is a commitment for the community, as well as for anyone who
volunteers as a mentor.

Students will appear on IRC and mailing list from March 17 (some
enterprising ones possibly earlier) to April 6 (the application
deadline) seeking to learn more about illumos and project prospects. We
strongly encourage applicants to learn more about illumos by building and
installing illumos-gate on top of an existing distribution, fixing
bite-sized bugs, learning to navigate the codebase, discussing projects
either from the community suggestion page or on their own initiative, and
otherwise becoming involved as contributors before submitting applications.

We encourage all community members to engage positively with promising
potential applications who demonstrate such interest, capability, and
commitment before and during the application period. Applicants will be
evaluated in part based on public community interaction. If students
contact you privately about their interest, respond as you feel
comfortable, but please also remember that pubic interactions are a
substantive basis for evaluation, both for acceptance and completion, and
be sure that students are aware of this.

Students are expected to engage the project sufficiently before the
official beginning of their mentorship that they can begin working on their
official start date of May 21. Students will be expected to devote
sufficient time to the project between being accepted on April 23 and
starting on May 21 to begin development work on their start date.

During GSoC students will be active on the developer lists and IRC channel.
Projects that treat students like regular contributors tend to have much
more successful mentorships. We do not want to make students unnecessarily
dependent on mentors, so we also encourage all community members to help
answer questions, make students aware of self-service resources, and
provide guidance and domain expertise. Please be aware that students will
be expected to check in regularly and share work-in-progress over existing
developer channels.

Mentoring

GSoC provides some general manuals:

       * http://www.booki.cc/gsoc-mentoring/
       * http://www.booki.cc/gsoc-mentoring/what-makes-a-good-mentor/

Mentors must be registered with Google no later than April 20, but illumos
will need to rank students and projects and thus have firm commitments by
mentors no later than April 16. Mentors are expected to check student
reports to the mailing list daily, regularly (at least weekly) review
progress and provide feedback over three months from May 21 to August 21,
to complete mid-term evaluations the week of July 9 and final evaluations
the week of August 20. and to hold students accountable for delivering
on-schedule and communicating promptly about any difficulties they may
encounter, particularly those that may require changes to deliverables.

Mentors can make arrangements for backup coverage (e.g. for holidays, in
case of conflicting work obligations), but they must have the bandwidth to
communicate with students on a daily basis for basic status checks, weekly
for work review, complete midterm and final reviews, and otherwise to
assist students with legitimate issues, either directly or by finding
available resources elsewhere in the community. Time commitments will
necessarily depend on the student, the project, and the wider base of
community members able to assist. We expect mentors to evaluate this and to
communicate these particulars to the org admin during student and project
selection period from April 7-20.

Organizational Administrator

The org admin (I've volunteered for this year, and Albert Lee will be
supporting me as last year's admin) will help mentors keep track of student
progress and make sure that students have development resources available
to them, including remotely accessible development systems. If you are a
potential mentor wishing to discuss applicants or projects during the
application period, please contact the us privately.

Timeline:

http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/events/google/gsoc2012

Main page:

http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2012
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