Re: [RFH] GSoC 2015 application

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 06:35:09AM +0100, Michael Haggerty wrote:

> On 02/18/2015 08:14 PM, Jeff King wrote:
> > The response to my previous email was not overwhelming, but people did
> > express some interest in Git doing GSoC this year. So I've started on
> > the application, using last year's version as a template.
> 
> Regretfully, I can't in good conscience volunteer to be a GSoC mentor
> this year. I have too many other projects going on and don't see how I
> can free up enough time to be a good mentor.

Thanks for letting us know. I am somewhat in the same boat. I might be
able to make time, but the bar that the student/project combo would have
to clear would be quite high for me to agree to do so.

This brings up an important issue. We cannot do GSoC without mentors. I
had hoped that people populating the "ideas" list would volunteer to
mentor for their projects.

But so far the possibilities are:

  - Stefan

  - me, who has already promised to be stingy

  - Matthieu, who also cited time constraints

  - Junio, who contributed some project ideas, but who in the past has
    declined to mentor in order to remain impartial as the maintainer
    who evaluates student results (which I think is quite reasonable)

So...basically 1 mentor and 2 reticent maybes? That doesn't look good.
We are not committed to anything until we accept student proposals,
of course. But I would not want to waste students' time in applying if
it is not realistic for us to accept them.

-Peff