[Soc-coordination] Debian as a GSoC umbrella org?

[Obey Arthur Liu]

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Sylvestre Ledru <sylvestre at debian.org> wrote:
> Le mardi 15 février 2011 à 15:19 +0100, Steffen Möller a écrit :
>> On 02/15/2011 02:49 PM, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
>> > On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 02:30:17PM +0100, Obey Arthur Liu wrote:
>> > Why can't we just allow proposals from blends to flow in together with
>> > non-blends one? If they are good proposals, I don't doubt they will have
>> > chances to compete side by side with other proposals, on the basis of
>> > their merits.
>>
>> My answer is that those projects are too different to have them
>> compared directly.
> I don't believe we should judge only on the subject but also in the
> quality of the student's proposal itself.
> Being a bit involved in Debian Science, I'll be very happy to see
> science-related project in the Gsoc and I believe that they should
> be dealt with the same importance as others.

That is the point of having an umbrella-style organization. As it has
happened every year, many core DDs just don't care about these related
projects as much as they care about core projects. As a result, they
get very poorly ranked.
I personally think that within the current setup, these projects are
out-of-scope for GSoC at Debian, the same way that we have
systematically rejected "Package software X into the Debian Archive".

>> Stefano, Arthur, if either of you vetos the idea to have a separate
>> organisation with  GSoC bearing the name "Debian", then this of course
>> won't happen and I do not feel any bad about it (who could I).
> We could also ask for more slots to increase the chance to have
> science-related projects selected.

To be clear, I don't personally object to having Debian Med running
independently for GSoC, with Debian or not in its name.
I also don't feel that it would cause any significant loss of slots to
Debian so that's not even a reason.
I'm just wondering about the viability of such an independent endeavor.

My personal dilemma here is that on the one hand I'm discouraging you
from applying independently and on the other, I think these projects
are out-of-scope for Debian GSoC. Of course it's only a personal
opinion and the official position of Debian will come through
consensus, which is why I put the discussion here.

Arthur