Google Summer of Code '07 application

Google Summer of Code '07 application

[Shawn O. Pearce]

I'm drafting the application right now.  It is due March 12th.
Time is a 'ticking!

http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/Soc2007Application

---
''' What is your Organization's Name? '''

Git Development Community

''' What is your Organization's Homepage? '''

[http://git.or.cz/]

''' Describe your organization. '''

The Git development community is a loosly knitted team of developers,
documentation writers and end-users with the common goal of
building and maintaining a high quality revision control system.
As an offshoot of the Linux kernel team, we take great pride in
our open development methdology and emphasis on quality.

''' Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2007? What
do you hope to gain by participating? '''

Although Git has developed from absolutely nothing to one of the
most useful version control systems in less than 2 years, there are
still a wide number of new and exciting features that users continue
to ask about.  We hope to engage several students in projects that
will bring some of these features to life, or to create features
that have not even been considered.

''' Did your organization participate in GSoC 2005 or 2006? If so,
please summarize your involvement and the successes and failures
of your student projects. '''

No.

''' If your organization has not previously participated in GSoC,
have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)? '''

We did not apply in the past.  This is our first application.

''' Who will your organization administrator be? Please include Google
Account information. '''

Shawn O. Pearce (have Google Account)

Unless Junio wants it?

''' What license does your project use? '''

GPL (GNU Public License)

''' What is the URL for your ideas page? '''

[http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/SoC2007Ideas]

''' What is the main development mailing list for your organization? '''

git@vger.kernel.org

''' What is the main IRC channel for your organization? '''

#git on irc.freenode.org.

''' Does your organization have an application template you would like
to see students use? If so, please provide it now. '''

NEEDED?

''' Who will be your backup organization administrator? Please include
Google Account information. '''

NEEDED!  BADLY!

''' Who will your mentors be? Please include Google Account
Information. '''

 * Shawn O. Pearce (have Google Account)
 * Martin Langhoff (need Google Account)

[sp: Nice if we had a few more!]

''' What criteria did you use to select these individuals as
mentors? Please be as specific as possible. '''

All mentors volunteered for the specific project(s) that they could
contribute the most to.  All mentors are active contributers within
the Git development community.

Active contributers are defined to be those who have submitted and
have had accepted into a shipped release a substational amount of
new code or fixes within the last 4 months (Nov 2006 - Mar 2007).
Substational amount of code is defined to be equal in size (or
larger) to what might be reasonably expected of a student working
on a Google Summer of Code project.

In short, all mentors are well known within the Git development
community for their accomplishments and contributions.

''' What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students? '''

Every reasonable effort will be made to maintain contact with
students and ensure they are making progress throughout the summer.

NEEDED! BADLY!

''' What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors? '''

In the unlikely event that a mentor disappears during the summer
another mentor will be arranged to step in.  The Git community has
plenty of good people within that would be more than happy to help
a student finish their project.

''' What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with
your project's community before, during and after the program? '''

Students will be required to join the main development mailing
list, post bi-weekly project updates to same, and post patches for
discussion to same.  Likewise all current contributors already do
this, so students will see the experienced hands doing the same
thing, thereby helping the students to stay a part of the community.

Mailing list traffic is currently around 100 messages per day,
maximum, and is focused completely on Git feature development.
Keeping current by at least skimming list messages is an important
part of the Git development process.

Students will be encouraged to post their work as a Git repository
on repo.or.cz (an open community hosting server) so that their work
is immediately available for everyone to review, experiment with,
and hopefully make use of.

Mentors will exchange email with students on at least a weekly basis,
if not more frequently.  Frequent email and IRC interaction with
mentors will be strongly encouraged.

''' What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with
the project after GSoC concludes? '''

Mentors (and hopefully by then other members of the Git development
community) will try to keep in touch with students by email.  We hope
that by monitoring the mailing list during the GSoC students will
find other projects that may be of interest (at least one interesting
idea pops up every week, with not enough people to work on them),
and that they can be encouraged into working on them even after
they have returned to their studies.

-- 
Shawn.

Re: Google Summer of Code '07 application

[Shawn O. Pearce]

"Shawn O. Pearce" <spearce@spearce.org> wrote:
> I'm drafting the application right now.  It is due March 12th.
> Time is a 'ticking!
> 
> http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/Soc2007Application

I have updated the wiki with the final draft, and taken into account
the copy editing that people were trying to do last night in parallel
with me overwriting their changes all of the time.  ;-)

I would like to thank those who were hacking on the this application
on the Wiki (Jakub and someone else), and Junio, for his useful
comments by email and on IRC last night.

I think the application is ready to go, but I would really appreciate
it if someone else can review it and agree.  ;-)

The notes "({have,need} Google Account)" are just notes to me to
include the Gmail address of each individual when I copy and paste
this into Google's web application.  (I have all of those stored
in a different file.)

---
''' What is your Organization's Name? '''

Git Development Community

''' What is your Organization's Homepage? '''

[http://git.or.cz/]

''' Describe your organization. '''

The Git development community is a loosely knitted team of
developers, documentation writers and end-users with the common goal
of building and maintaining a high quality revision control system.
As an offshoot of the Linux kernel team, we take great pride in
our open development methodology and emphasis on quality.

Git is currently used by at least 5 of the GSoC 2006 projects
(One Laptop Per Child, Tangram, The Wine Project, XMMS2, X.org),
not to mention the Linux kernel, and in the past year has been (or
is still being) considered for conversion by at least another 6
(FreeBSD Project, Gentoo, KDE, OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris, The
Mozilla Foundation).

''' Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2007? What
do you hope to gain by participating? '''

Although Git has developed from absolutely nothing to one of the most
useful version control systems in less than 2 years, there are still
many new and exciting features that users continue to ask about.
We hope to engage several students in projects that will bring some
of these features to life, or to create useful features that have
not even been considered yet.

Of particular interest are the features that the other prior GSoC
projects have asked for, such as submodule support (Gentoo) or a
native Windows port (KDE, The Mozilla Foundation).

''' Did your organization participate in GSoC 2005 or 2006? If so,
please summarize your involvement and the successes and failures
of your student projects. '''

No.

''' If your organization has not previously participated in GSoC,
have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)? '''

We did not apply in the past.  This is our first application.

''' Who will your organization administrator be? Please include Google
Account information. '''

Shawn O. Pearce (have Google Account)

''' What license does your project use? '''

GPL (GNU Public License)

''' What is the URL for your ideas page? '''

[http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/SoC2007Ideas]

''' What is the main development mailing list for your organization? '''

git@vger.kernel.org

''' What is the main IRC channel for your organization? '''

#git on irc.freenode.org.

''' Does your organization have an application template you would like
to see students use? If so, please provide it now. '''

''' Who will be your backup organization administrator? Please include
Google Account information. '''

 * Martin Langhoff (have Google Account)

''' Who will your mentors be? Please include Google Account
Information. '''

 * Petr Baudis (have Google Account)
 * Brian Gernhardt (have Google Account)
 * Martin Langhoff (have Google Account)
 * Shawn O. Pearce (have Google Account)
 * Johannes Schindelin (have Google Account)
 * Martin Waitz (need Google Account)

''' What criteria did you use to select these individuals as
mentors? Please be as specific as possible. '''

All mentors volunteered for the specific project(s) that they could
contribute the most to.  All mentors are active contributers within
the Git development community.

Active contributers are defined to be those who have submitted and
have had accepted into a shipped release a substantial amount of
new code or fixes within the last 4 months (Nov 2006 - Mar 2007).
Substantial amount of code is defined to be equal in size (or
larger) to what might be reasonably expected of a student working
on a Google Summer of Code project.

All mentors are well known within the Git development community
for their accomplishments and contributions.

''' What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students? '''

Every reasonable effort will be made to maintain contact with
students and ensure they are making progress throughout the summer.

In the unfortunate event that a student abandons and does not
complete his/her GSoC project, the Git community will try to pick up
and continue the work without the student.  This is one reason why we
will require frequent publishing of project materials to repo.or.cz.

''' What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors? '''

In the unlikely event that a mentor disappears during the summer
another mentor will be arranged to step in.  The Git community
has plenty of good people within that would be more than happy
to help a student finish their project.  It is very probable that
the replacement mentor would already be familiar with the student
and the project, as many community members routinely review code
and discussions on the mailing list.

''' What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with
your project's community before, during and after the program? '''

Students will be required to join the main development mailing list,
post weekly project updates to same, and post patches for discussion
to same.  All current contributors already do this, so students
will see the experienced hands doing the same thing. We feel that
this will help the students to stay a part of the community.

Mailing list traffic is currently around 80-100 messages per day
(maximum), and is focused completely on Git feature development.
Keeping current by at least skimming list messages is an important
part of the Git development process.

Students will be required to post their work as a Git repository on
repo.or.cz (an open community hosting server) so that their work
is immediately available for everyone to review, experiment with,
and hopefully make use of.

Mentors will also exchange email with students on at least a weekly
basis, if not more frequently.  Frequent email and IRC interaction
with mentors and other Git interested developers will be strongly
encouraged.

''' What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with
the project after GSoC concludes? '''

GSoC will be a good introduction to git (both the technology and the
community) for the students.  Once they know git and are "hooked",
we are confident they won't easily leave the arena, for a number
of reasons.

The interaction between community members has always been very
friendly, and new people are warmly welcomed, especially those with
interesting new ideas and viewpoints.  Jovial working friendships
have been easily formed between the community members, and students
will certainly be warmly welcomed into that environment.

Hacking on Git is an excellent way to hone one's development skills,
as the community is filled with a wide range of very experienced
programmers who are ready and willing to help a contributor improve
the quality of their work.  We hope that students will realize this
unique opportunity during GSoC and continue staying active within
the community.

-- 
Shawn.

Re: Google Summer of Code '07 application

[J. Bruce Fields]

On Thu, Mar 08, 2007 at 09:21:18PM -0500, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:
> I have updated the wiki with the final draft, and taken into account
> the copy editing that people were trying to do last night in parallel
> with me overwriting their changes all of the time.  ;-)

I see a few more minor language fixes--do you want them by wiki or
email?

> ''' Describe your organization. '''
> 
> The Git development community is a loosely knitted team of
> developers, documentation writers and end-users with the common goal
> of building and maintaining a high quality revision control system.
> As an offshoot of the Linux kernel team, we take great pride in
> our open development methodology and emphasis on quality.
> 
> Git is currently used by at least 5 of the GSoC 2006 projects
> (One Laptop Per Child, Tangram, The Wine Project, XMMS2, X.org),
> not to mention the Linux kernel, and in the past year has been (or
> is still being) considered for conversion by at least another 6
> (FreeBSD Project, Gentoo, KDE, OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris, The
> Mozilla Foundation).

The first paragraph (in particular, first sentence) is a little
generic--couldn't it mostly apply to all of the GSoC projects?  You
might turn it around and start with the second paragraph, which is stuff
only git can boast of:

	As Git approaches its second anniversary, it is now the revision
	control system of choice for many of the largest and most
	succesful open source projects, including the Linux kernel and
	at least 5 Google Summer of Code 2006 projects: One Laptop Per
	Child, Tangram, The Wine Project, XMMS2, and X.org.  Many more
	are considering Git adoption.

	This achievement is the product of the Git development
	community, a loose-knit team of developers, technical writers,
	and end users with a passion for high quality open-source
	development.

> ''' Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2007? What
> do you hope to gain by participating? '''
> 
> Although Git has developed from absolutely nothing to one of the most
> useful version control systems in less than 2 years, there are still
> many new and exciting features that users continue to ask about.
> We hope to engage several students in projects that will bring some
> of these features to life, or to create useful features that have
> not even been considered yet.
> 
> Of particular interest are the features that the other prior GSoC
> projects have asked for, such as submodule support (Gentoo) or a
> native Windows port (KDE, The Mozilla Foundation).

Here also maybe leading with the specifics would make it stronger?:

	Prior Google Summer of Code projects have asked for new features
	in Git, including submodule support (needed by Gentoo) native
	Windows port (needed by KDE and The Mozilla Foundation).....

(Would it be worth listing more examples here, or does the application
already include a comprehensive list?)

Also I'm not sure we answered the question quite as directly as we could
here.  Maybe just something like this?:

	The future development and maintenance of these and other
	features depends on our continued ability to attract new
	developers.

But that's a little generic.

It seems to me that the Git community has been pretty good at attracting
and mentoring new contributors.  The maintainers have been really
conscientious about explaining the project architecture and giving
feedback on contributions.

I'm not sure how to make that really clear, or where to fit it in.
Maybe in the answer to one of these two?:

> ''' What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with
> your project's community before, during and after the program? '''

> ''' What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with
> the project after GSoC concludes? '''

This comes close:

> GSoC will be a good introduction to git (both the technology and the
> community) for the students.  Once they know git and are "hooked",
> we are confident they won't easily leave the arena, for a number
> of reasons.
> 
> The interaction between community members has always been very
> friendly, and new people are warmly welcomed, especially those with
> interesting new ideas and viewpoints.  Jovial working friendships
> have been easily formed between the community members, and students
> will certainly be warmly welcomed into that environment.

I wonder if it'd be easy to come up with some more specifics to support
these kinds of statements.  Could even point to particular exchanges in
the mail archives if there's anything short that obviously demonstrates
the point.  Also I think it's not so much "friendliness" as willingness
(and ability) to communicate what's important very clearly.

--b.

Re: Google Summer of Code '07 application

[Shawn O. Pearce]

"J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 08, 2007 at 09:21:18PM -0500, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:
> > I have updated the wiki with the final draft, and taken into account
> > the copy editing that people were trying to do last night in parallel
> > with me overwriting their changes all of the time.  ;-)
> 
> I see a few more minor language fixes--do you want them by wiki or
> email?

Wiki would probably just be quicker.  Feel free to edit away.
 
> > ''' Describe your organization. '''
> 
> The first paragraph (in particular, first sentence) is a little
> generic--couldn't it mostly apply to all of the GSoC projects?  You
> might turn it around and start with the second paragraph, which is stuff
> only git can boast of:
> 
> 	As Git approaches its second anniversary, it is now the revision
> 	control system of choice for many of the largest and most
> 	succesful open source projects, including the Linux kernel and
> 	at least 5 Google Summer of Code 2006 projects: One Laptop Per
> 	Child, Tangram, The Wine Project, XMMS2, and X.org.  Many more
> 	are considering Git adoption.
> 
> 	This achievement is the product of the Git development
> 	community, a loose-knit team of developers, technical writers,
> 	and end users with a passion for high quality open-source
> 	development.

Yes.  Last night when I went to bed I realized I should try to
improve this answer.  I think its one of the more important ones
in the application; we need to show we are looking at GSoC as a
way to attract new talent to the community, not as a way to get
free paid coders for a few months.  GSoC is more about getting
students involved in open source, and keeping them involved.
We all obviously want to attract new talent, and keep them here
once we've got 'em.  ;-)
 
> > ''' Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2007? What
> > do you hope to gain by participating? '''
> 
> Here also maybe leading with the specifics would make it stronger?:
> 
> 	Prior Google Summer of Code projects have asked for new features
> 	in Git, including submodule support (needed by Gentoo) native
> 	Windows port (needed by KDE and The Mozilla Foundation).....

Yes, good...
 
> (Would it be worth listing more examples here, or does the application
> already include a comprehensive list?)

The application has a link to our SoC2007Ideas page, so I don't
think it is worth including all of them here.  Anyone at Google who
is sifting through the applications can easily follow the link to
the ideas page if they want to see what else we are looking to do.
What I was trying to do here was to highlight the fact that last
year Google supported some of these projects, and we are also trying
to support them too, so maybe Google can help us help them.  ;-)
 
> It seems to me that the Git community has been pretty good at attracting
> and mentoring new contributors.  The maintainers have been really
> conscientious about explaining the project architecture and giving
> feedback on contributions.

Also good... I've tried to include this in the answer.

> I'm not sure how to make that really clear, or where to fit it in.
> Maybe in the answer to one of these two?:
> 
> > ''' What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with
> > your project's community before, during and after the program? '''
> 
> > ''' What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with
> > the project after GSoC concludes? '''

> I wonder if it'd be easy to come up with some more specifics to support
> these kinds of statements.  Could even point to particular exchanges in
> the mail archives if there's anything short that obviously demonstrates
> the point.  Also I think it's not so much "friendliness" as willingness
> (and ability) to communicate what's important very clearly.

Locating specifics might be good.  I can't think of any off the
top of my head.  Maybe if I went waaaaay back and found some of
my initial emails (Feb 17th timeframe), I could use myself as
an example.  I know I got beat up a bit by Junio about how I did
a bug fix in git-reset.  ;-)

-- 
Shawn.

Re: Google Summer of Code '07 application

[Junio C Hamano]

"Shawn O. Pearce" <spearce@spearce.org> writes:

> "J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org> wrote:
> ...
>> I wonder if it'd be easy to come up with some more specifics to support
>> these kinds of statements.  Could even point to particular exchanges in
>> the mail archives if there's anything short that obviously demonstrates
>> the point.  Also I think it's not so much "friendliness" as willingness
>> (and ability) to communicate what's important very clearly.
>
> Locating specifics might be good.  I can't think of any off the
> top of my head.  Maybe if I went waaaaay back and found some of
> my initial emails (Feb 17th timeframe), I could use myself as
> an example.  I know I got beat up a bit by Junio about how I did
> a bug fix in git-reset.  ;-)

I do not remember that one.

But one thing I think everybody can be proud of about this
community is that we haven't had any meaningless flamewar at
all.  Even the discussions on the hotter side in the past,
perhaps primarily coming from crashing cultures, tended to
produce useful improvements.  

One example that comes to my mind is the UI change in 1.5.0.  It
started when Carl Worth was sufficiently irritated by how
different and inapproachable git was to new people, and at some
point the discussion almost went near "well, distributed is
different from CVS, so shut up and come back later when your CVS
braindamange is healed", but we quite didn't go that way.
Instead, the discussion resulted in the "usability and
teachability" theme.

Re: Google Summer of Code '07 application

[Andy Parkins]

On Friday 2007, March 09, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> But one thing I think everybody can be proud of about this
> community is that we haven't had any meaningless flamewar at
> all.  Even the discussions on the hotter side in the past,
> perhaps primarily coming from crashing cultures, tended to
> produce useful improvements.

I have to agree.  As a relative newbie, and all-round submitter of 
opinions but not code, I have to say that the thing that keeps me 
attached to the git project where I have never become involved with 
other projects is that even when you are getting blasted and argued 
with and told you are wrong, everyone uses logical arguments; points 
are taken seriously and addressed under the assumption that the 
questioner is not an idiot.  This is different to the usual "that's 
just how it is, if you don't like it why don't you fork the project".

> One example that comes to my mind is the UI change in 1.5.0.  It
> started when Carl Worth was sufficiently irritated by how
> different and inapproachable git was to new people, and at some
> point the discussion almost went near "well, distributed is
> different from CVS, so shut up and come back later when your CVS
> braindamange is healed", but we quite didn't go that way.
> Instead, the discussion resulted in the "usability and
> teachability" theme.

It's this attitude that encouraged me to write and post my git-niggles 
list.  It was a pleasure to see positive responses, and then see Shawn 
posting patches that addressed some of them.  I would never have dared 
post something so potentially-controversial if I hadn't seen that 
people rarely get shouted down on the list.

I'd like to reiterate though - I don't think that it is the /acceptance/ 
of ideas that makes the git community strong - it is that ideas are 
taken seriously.  For me, I don't mind if something I suggest is 
ignored, never implemented or disagreed with; all I am actually after 
is the feeling that someone listened to me and understood what I was 
asking for.  "I like it but I'm not going to implement it", "here's 
where you would go if you wanted to implement that", "I see what you're 
asking for but I think that it's better to do it like this" are all 
highly acceptable responses.   Surprisingly, responses like this are 
not the norm in many projects.  Equivalents of "Get the hell off our 
mailing list" /are/ common.

In short - the thing that makes the git community great, is not their 
friendliness or their willingness to implement every request that comes 
along, it is the attitude that most people are not idiots and that 
every idea merits listening to.



Andy
-- 
Dr Andy Parkins, M Eng (hons), MIET
andyparkins@gmail.com

Re: Google Summer of Code '07 application

[J. Bruce Fields]

On Fri, Mar 09, 2007 at 10:39:34AM -0500, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:
> "J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org> wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 08, 2007 at 09:21:18PM -0500, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:
> > > I have updated the wiki with the final draft, and taken into account
> > > the copy editing that people were trying to do last night in parallel
> > > with me overwriting their changes all of the time.  ;-)
> > 
> > I see a few more minor language fixes--do you want them by wiki or
> > email?
> 
> Wiki would probably just be quicker.  Feel free to edit away.

OK, I did a little more editing.  A couple more changes to consider:

At

http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/wiki/AdviceforMentors

they suggest that smaller completed projects are easier to pick up than
larger unfinished work,  Makes sense to me.  That might suggest a
slightly different approach here:

	"In the unfortunate event that a student abandons and does not
	complete his/her GSoC project, the Git community will try to
	pick up and continue the work without the student.  This is one
	reason why we will require frequent publishing of project
	materials to repo.or.cz."

But I'm not sure what exactly--maybe say something about encouraging
small incremental steps?

Also they suggest that "students should not be forced to do anything
that other contributors do not do, so if the student wants to blog, let
them do so, but do not force them."  So maybe we should ditch the
"weekly project updates" requirement.  Those might not end up being very
substantive anyway.  Maybe replace that with some sort of private
communication with the mentor?  (And the irc office hours thing sounds
like a good idea too--might be worth mentioning.)

--b.