Re: [9fans] Google Summer of code 2009

[Dave Eckhardt <davide+p9@cs.cmu.edu>]

> I heard that there will be a GSoC this year, are there
> any plans to get plan 9 as a mentoring organization?

There has been some discussion about this among the people who
put together last year's application.

For whatever mixture of factors, we ended up "below the line"
last year.  This year more groups are expected to apply, and
Google has indicated they plan to support fewer groups and
fewer students this year as compared to last year.  Each of
those trends seems likely to push us further "below the line"
if we submit a similar application again this year.

For that reason, the thinking is that this summer we should
pursue alternative courses of action.  Examples might include
organizing some bug-fixing weekends or install fests, improving
performance and usability of Plan 9 in various VM's (since this
is probably the safest way to ensure that a new user's install
works the *first* time)...

Next year maybe we'll be different, and maybe GSoC will be
different.

Dave Eckhardt