Re: [9fans] Plan 9 rejected from GSoC 2012

[John Floren <john@jfloren.net>]

Kickstarter works because the people on Kickstarter are interested in
whatever the project is producing. A book, a video game, other
products. Plan 9 has a small community and an even smaller number of
people who actually use it. Unfortunately, I don't think there's
enough money there to pay for 1 GSoC-equivalent student, especially
considering that the project may turn out to be something the
contributors have very little interest in.

GSoC works great for Google because they have the money & organization
to do it. It builds good-will for them and helps them scout potential
employees while also (ideally) improving open source projects. The
only thing 9fans has out of that list is the interest in improving an
open source project :)

John

On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 3:39 PM, Joseph Stewart
<joseph.stewart@gmail.com> wrote:
> I guess I didn't realize there was pay involved. How about a kick-starter
> approach? Think it'd work?
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 3:20 PM, John Floren <john@jfloren.net> wrote:
>>
>> I think being able to pay the students is what really makes GSoC work.
>> It adds an additional dimension that makes it a lot harder to just
>> say, "Oh, I'm bored with this, I quit".
>>
>> John
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 3:06 PM, Joseph Stewart
>> <joseph.stewart@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > So this all makes me wonder why some social aggregation group (aka stack
>> > overflow or reddit/programming) or even just a big group of
>> > decentralized
>> > nerds couldn't just do a variant of GSoC on our own.
>> >
>> > Lining up mentors and mentees particularly w/o big biz or school backing
>> > is
>> > kinda what open source is all about.
>> >
>> > I guess what I'm saying is "could we do this on our own"? Maybe not
>> > having
>> > Google behind the effort takes some of the air out of it... but maybe
>> > not?
>> >
>> > -j
>> >
>> >
>> > On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 1:35 PM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On Sun Mar 18 16:32:12 EDT 2012, rminnich@gmail.com wrote:
>> >> > coreboot got rejected too and we had 5 years in a row. Don't feel
>> >> > bad.
>> >> > I think they're trying to make sure that they don't get the same
>> >> > players year after year, which is a good idea IMHO.
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> thanks, ron.  that's reason enough to try again next year.
>> >>
>> >> - erik
>> >>
>> >
>>
>