On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Jorge G. Mare <jorge.g.mare@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Although (lack of time) time alone may not be the only reason, I think
it is fair to say that the more time you can commit to GSOC, the more
chances you have of both being selected and eventually succeeding in
your GSOC project; which after all is, well, kind of obvious. :)
I can say with certainty that I will be extremely prejudiced to those
students who do not plan to commit at least 40 hours a week (or close
to it) to GSoC. This will be my fourth year as a mentor. I was a
mentor for Ruby for one year, then two years for Haiku. I've learned a
lot from that and have realized I was way too lax in previous years.
GSoC should be seen as a summer job.
Think about it: the developers on all these open source projects that
participate in the GSoC spend many hours on those projects each week,
mostly for free (that is certainly the case for Haiku.) So I don't
think it is too much to expect students to devote time when they are
paid a very reasonable wage, probably more than they might get in an
internship. Plus there is the resume building potential of being a
successful GSoC student.
So I expect all applicants to be very serious, and whatever student I
end up mentoring will be managed as closely as any full-time employee
under my supervision.
Also I expect all applicants to be honest about their summer
schedules. If a student is chosen who was not forthright about their
summer schedule commitments I will publicly call them out about it. In
this world of social media where blog and Twitter posts can make
people lose jobs, I hope the seriousness of this is understood.
On the other hand, students who commit the necessary time and who do a
good job on their project (or at least try hard) will receive my
praise and be able to use me as a reference in the future.