GSoC '07 - Accepted!

GSoC '07 - Accepted!

[Shawn O. Pearce]

Google accepted our application to GSoC '07.  Thanks to everyone
who helped with reviewing the application, and most of of all thanks
to our volunteer mentors!


Small catch though: I didn't find this clause earlier when I setup
the application, but reading through the Terms of Service for the
program I found this:

  10. All necessary tax forms or other tax related documentation
  required to provide payment to the organization

Yea... we as an organization get $500.00 USD for each student
that particpiates:

  http://code.google.com/soc/tos.html

Small fun fact that I did not previously realize.  Apparently there
might be some complications from being a GSoC project, as we don't
legally exist as an organization in any locality.  And there's of
course the question about what to do with the money we receive.

I figure we'll probably get 1, maybe 2 slots, which means about
$500-$1000 USD.

-- 
Shawn.

Re: GSoC '07 - Accepted!

[Shawn O. Pearce]

"Shawn O. Pearce" <spearce@spearce.org> wrote:
> Google accepted our application to GSoC '07.  Thanks to everyone
> who helped with reviewing the application, and most of of all thanks
> to our volunteer mentors!

Also, the organization setup page is asking us "desired number of
projects".

Hmm.  Gee.  We have an entire ideas page full of projects that we'd
desire to have done.  More than we can realistically mentor students
working through (depending on the skill level of the individual
of course).

I'm thinking we ask for 2 or 3 slots, given that we have 6 mentors
lined up right now.

Thoughts?

-- 
Shawn.

Re: GSoC '07 - Accepted!

[Linus Torvalds]

On Thu, 15 Mar 2007, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:
> 
> Small catch though: I didn't find this clause earlier when I setup
> the application, but reading through the Terms of Service for the
> program I found this:
> 
>   10. All necessary tax forms or other tax related documentation
>   required to provide payment to the organization
> 
> Yea... we as an organization get $500.00 USD for each student
> that particpiates:

I _think_ you can either:

 - decide to pay the mentor (and have the mentor just pay the tax on it 
   as extra income). Mentors can then sort it out amongst themselves.

 - If nobody really wants to go through the hassle (not so much in 
   receiving the money, as trying to sort it out ;), decide to just 
   directly transfer it to some charitable organization that is already 
   set up (eg the EFF).

as it would probably be more pain than it's worth to actually try to set 
up some "git foundation".

Regardless, congrats on the GSoC entry!

		Linus

Re: GSoC '07 - Accepted!

[Yann Dirson]

On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 09:43:46AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> it would probably be more pain than it's worth to actually try to set 
> up some "git foundation".

Right, but we also have the option to look at organisations dedicated
to handle this very problem, like Software in the Public Interest
(http://www.spi-inc.org/ - I'm sure there are others).  For the
record, SPI was initially created to handle the Debian assets, and now
does the same for other projects (notably, according to their website:
freedesktop, postgresql, oftc).

-- 
Yann.

Re: GSoC '07 - Accepted!

[Shawn O. Pearce]

"Shawn O. Pearce" <spearce@spearce.org> wrote:
> Google accepted our application to GSoC '07.  Thanks to everyone
> who helped with reviewing the application, and most of of all thanks
> to our volunteer mentors!

So I've been doing some more research on the GSoC process, based on
what other organizations have written about their own experiences
last year.  One thing that came up frequently was many organizations
found having a student application template useful, as it helped
the student and the mentors to better focus their proposal and
their review.

This may be important to us, as there were 6,338 applications
last year:

  http://code.google.com/soc/GSoC2006Statistics.pdf

Boost for example received some 160 or so applications (see page 3).
We aren't as big or as popular as Boost is, so I don't expect to
receive that many, but I would also like to hope that we will get
more than 10 applications.  ;-)

One of the better (in my opinion anyway) templates appears to
be the NetBSD one:

  http://www.netbsd.org/contrib/soc-application.xml

We have not yet defined a template for student applications, but
I'm thinking we may want to at least draft one up and offer it as
an option for students to follow.


Interesting side note: The largest compliant from the '06 Apache
Software Foundation mentors was that the students were not given
committer access to Subversion.  They felt this made it difficult
for the students to contribute.  Now if only there was a really
cool distributed version control system...  ;-)

-- 
Shawn.

Re: GSoC '07 - Accepted!

[Shawn O. Pearce]

"Shawn O. Pearce" <spearce@spearce.org> wrote:
> So I've been doing some more research on the GSoC process, based on
> what other organizations have written about their own experiences
> last year.  One thing that came up frequently was many organizations
> found having a student application template useful...
...
> We have not yet defined a template for student applications, but
> I'm thinking we may want to at least draft one up and offer it as
> an option for students to follow.

Besides giving the lesson that I cannot spell (or type), I've put
together a possible set of points that I think would help students to
write better proposals, and will help us as mentors to review them:

  http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/SoC2007Template

-- 
Shawn.

Re: GSoC '07 - Accepted!

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Fri, 16 Mar 2007, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:

> "Shawn O. Pearce" <spearce@spearce.org> wrote:
> > So I've been doing some more research on the GSoC process, based on
> > what other organizations have written about their own experiences
> > last year.  One thing that came up frequently was many organizations
> > found having a student application template useful...
> ...
> > We have not yet defined a template for student applications, but
> > I'm thinking we may want to at least draft one up and offer it as
> > an option for students to follow.
> 
> Besides giving the lesson that I cannot spell (or type), I've put
> together a possible set of points that I think would help students to
> write better proposals, and will help us as mentors to review them:
> 
>   http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/SoC2007Template

Looks good to me!

Ciao,
Dscho

Re: GSoC '07 - Accepted!

[Brian Gernhardt]

On Mar 16, 2007, at 8:18 AM, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

> On Fri, 16 Mar 2007, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:
>> Besides giving the lesson that I cannot spell (or type), I've put
>> together a possible set of points that I think would help students to
>> write better proposals, and will help us as mentors to review them:
>>
>>   http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/SoC2007Template
>
> Looks good to me!

Ditto.
~~ Brian