Re: Seeking Google SoC Mentors

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 09:53:41AM +0000, Dave Page wrote:
> Magnus Hagander wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 09:21:42AM +0000, Dave Page wrote:
> >> Tom Lane wrote:
> >>> Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> writes:
> >>>> Well, here's a question. Given the recent discussion re full
> >>>> disjunction, I'd like to know what sort of commitment we are going to
> >>>> give people who work on proposed projects.
> >>> Um, if you mean are we going to promise to accept a patch in advance of
> >>> seeing it, the answer is certainly not. Still, a SoC author can improve
> >>> his chances in all the usual ways, primarily by getting discussion and
> >>> rough consensus on a spec and then on an implementation sketch before
> >>> he starts to do much code. Lots of showstopper problems can be caught
> >>> at that stage.
> >> We cannot necessarily expect the students to work this way without
> >> guidance if they are not familiar with our processes before they start.
> >> The mentors should be there to guide not just with the technical aspects
> >> of the project, but the procedural as well imho.
> >
> > IIRC, last time we had a pgsql-students (or similar) mailinglist for the
> > SoC people. That was closed. Perhaps that's a bit counterproductive - it's
> > better to get introduced to the "normal way of doing things" right away?
> > With the help of the mentor, of course.
>
> Yes. The other issue though is that initial project proposal scoring and
> discussion is done on a private Google site by the mentors. I don't know
> if we're allowed to make the proposals public before they get accepted
> by Google in case the students copy or improve each others proposals.
> From their (and Google's) point of view their proposals are essentially
> job applications.

Right. We'll just have to live by Googles rule for that part, I'm
talking about the discussions later. Once things are approved, they
should all be handled on the standard mailinglists, IMHO.

Being able to make "possibly controversial" suggestiosn public
beforehand would certainly help, but may not be possible. But aren't we
supposed to pick mentors who will know enough to be able to make that
call themselves?

//Magnus