[9fans] Summer of Plan 9

[Anthony Sorace <a@9srv.net>]

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Reparenting.

> 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.

This is entirely possible. Other organizations who've previously been
involved in GSoC have done this - KDE being the most notable
example. Google provides some useful tools and examples from their
own experience with GSoC that would be helpful (for our community,
maybe more the knowledge than the tools, but who knows), and I'm
certain some of the Google, KDE, or other similar folks would be
willing to talk to us about how to get such a thing off the ground.

Yes, there is money involved. From memory, students get $500 when
they're accepted, $2,250 if they pass midterm evaluation, and another
$2,250 if they pass final evaluation. It's a decent (if unimpressive)
stipend for a sumer internship. Google's motto for the payments has
become "flip bits, not burgers". It's not about competing for top
talent on price, but rather allowing students who'd really like to be
coding for the summer to do so without worrying about where their
food (beer?) money will come from.

We do have some money sitting with Software for the Public Interest
(SPI) with our name on it from our previous participation with GSoC,
but probably only enough to sponsor 1.5 students at GSoC-ish rates.
SPI's also changed either their requirements or their enforcement of
them since we got that money in (part of why we don't have more in
there) which might make getting it out a bit tricky, but I'm sure it's
possible. I'll start figuring out how we can make that happen (which
we should know anyway).

My main concern is that to put on some kind of formal program,
we'd need a certain critical mass to make it worthwhile. I think it'd be
a bit silly to do this as a program (rather than just hiring a student for
a summer) if we couldn't host, say, a half-dozen students, at least.
Unfortunately, that's more than the total number of even half-way
respectable applications we got last year. Now, we had a few folks
commit to helping out with PR for this year's GSoC effort, had we
been admitted, so I imagine we would've done better this year.

I think if we can't get this level of participation lined up, with funding
to back it, we're not really talking about a Sumer of Code style
program, and are really talking about some sort of organized
"bounty" system (where, say, Kickstarter might be a better fit).
That's okay, although their success is more spotty than GSoC's.

So that brings me to my two main questions for a hypothetical
Summer of Plan 9:

1)	Participation
	Do folks believe (based on knowledge of actual students, not
	just "of course Plan 9 is awesome!") that we could get some
	promising students interested in participating in such a
	program for the summer? Understanding that it'd have less
	resumé value than a Google-back project and the selection of
	projects is inherently a bit more limited. Assume we could pay
	roughly comparably to GSoC. I'm mostly interested in hearing
	from folks with direct academic connections or other exposure
	to actual candidates here.

2)	Funding
	Assume we'd look to fund 6 students at $5,000 each, and we
	can get $6,000 from SPI. That puts us $24,000 short. Any good
	ideas for where that'd come from? Anyone with good lines to a
	prospective corporate backer? Keep in mind we don't currently
	have a formal entity to handle the money (non-profit or
	otherwise), which might put off some potential backers. Folks
	may want to contact me off-list; I'll keep things (other than a
	running total of potential funds) confidential until we're ready
	to commit.

We have great mentors. I'd (humbly!) suggest that between Devon
and I we've got most of the org admin stuff pretty well down. Having
fired my main paying client, I've got some free time for interesting
tech work, and would gladly put that into getting all the infrastructure
working. If we can address the above two points by, say, the end of
March or very early April, I think we can make a run of it.

Anthony

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