[Soc-coordination] Re: Deciding on our applications

[Neil Williams]

On Sun, 8 Apr 2007 18:09:51 +1000
Anthony Towns <aj at azure.humbug.org.au> wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 08, 2007 at 01:06:35AM +0100, Wookey wrote:
> > So I'm left feeling the overall ranking is not optimum, but not at
> > all sure what might be done about that, or whether others would
> > agree. Is this just me and my pet project, or do others agree?
>
> CD, embedded and i18n all seem worth a slot in principle, but as
> someone who's not familiar with those areas in detail, I'm not sure
> how valuable the projects are, or how likely they are to succeed.

That just reinforces my feeling that specialised applications will
inevitably lose out. By definition, most people reading the
applications will be in the same position as you. Those applications
that deal with tools that every DD simply has to use will win out over
applications that could actually provide immense benefits to the
smaller groups within Debian.

> Also, according to gstein of google, the overall failure rate of
> projects in GSoC is about 15% (about 1 in 7), while Debian's failure
> rate last year was 40% (4 in 10). So I figure we should be focussing
> on making sure we've got really good/dedicated mentors for the
> projects we end up picking this year.

I'm the newbie here, only Wookey can really know how good/bad I may be
as a potential mentor for SoC - I hope that doesn't mean that Hector's
application loses out on that score as well, just because his mentor is
new to Debian and hasn't had a chance to meet with more than a handful
of DD's yet.

I met Hector for the first time at Fosdem in February, we worked on the
toolchain builder together with Wookey and we got a lot done in the
v.limited time available. I know it'll sound like "well he would say
that" but I have a lot of time to give to Emdebian, I am determined to
continue the progress that has been made already since I became a DD in
October.

I've done mentoring before in other roles, it has been part of my normal
paid employment for over 10 years. It's not that hard to transfer that
experience to Debian.

In order to make an assessment of whether a mentor for SoC is
"good/dedicated", I fear decisions would have to be made on the basis of
personal knowledge of the DD which makes it very hard for me - both in
assessing and being assessed.

--


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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