[Soc-coordination] Bits from the GSoC admins: important information for mentors

[David Bremner]

Dear mentors,

Here is some (long due) information from the Debian GSoC admins about
the ongoing program.

= Debian selected as a mentoring organization =

The formal student application period [0] opens on April 22 at 19:00 UTC
and runs until May 3, 19:00 UTC, but students are encouraged to engage
with prospective mentors and start drafting their proposals now.

[0] http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2013#Google_timeline

= Project criteria =

To ensure the quality, and maximize the chances of success for this
year's crop of Debian projects, we will enforce some stricter guidelines
on the projects we will accept.

Executive summary for the impatient:
 - Find co-mentors for your project(s)
 - Ask your students to contribute something related to your project at
   application time
 - Packaging-only projects are not acceptable

== Co-mentoring ==

We would be really grateful for "sole" mentors to find co-mentors for
their projects. The idea behind this is spreading the mentoring load on
more shoulders, and avoiding any issue should a mentor have unforeseen
(or foreseen) unavailabilities. We are likely to favor co-mentored
projects should the need arise at slot allocation time.

== Pre-Application Contribution ==

This year each potential student should be asked to make a small
contribution related to the project they are applying to work on. This
will require coordination with the mentor(s) to choose a suitable task;
the idea is to ensure that the student and the mentor are comfortable
about working together for an extended period of time. While generally a
good idea, this allows us to

Once this small task is done, ask your potential student to add a
description of the task and a link that shows the work done to his/her
corresponding student application.

== Acceptability of packaging-only projects ==

Building upon the successes and failures of years past, we want to
emphasize that packaging-only projects are out of the scope of GSoC. We
feel that GSoC projects need to contribute more than just the "usual"
Debian packaging work. For instance, developing helpers to package
libraries for a language, or automated package creation tools is
acceptable, but just "packaging software X, then Y, then Z" is not. So
far, the project ideas we have comply with this guideline, and we'll be
glad to discuss the specifics with individual mentors.

= Outreach Program for Women and GSoC =

As recently announced [1], this year Debian will also participate in the
Gnome Outreach Program for Women [2]. Debian will offer one internship
in this program in the Summer of 2013. Possible projects include the
GSoC projects and some additional projects. We aligned the GSoC project
criteria to the OPW ones and the application process for students is the
same as the GSoC one, see [3] for more details.

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/04/msg00001.html
[2] http://wiki.debian.org/OutreachProgramForWomen
[3] http://wiki.debian.org/OutreachProgramForWomen#OPW_and_GSoC


Your Debian GSoC Admins,
 - David Bremner, Paul Tagliamonte, Nicolas Dandrimont and Sukhbir Singh

Your OPW admins,
 - Mònica Ramírez Arceda and Patty Langasek

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