Re: Git and GSoC 2013

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 28, 2013, 16:45 UTC
Message-ID: <7vtxnvv5gx.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CAP8UFD1CjfJ8wM-htX8SOOveAt8zQ+qBRk_P016Y57jWnt6sCw@mail.gmail.com>

Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

> On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 7:52 PM, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Jeff King wrote:
>>
>>> There was a big thread about a month ago on whether Git should do Google
>>> Summer of Code this year[1].
>
> I think we should do it.
>
> It looks strange to me to say that students are great and at the same
> time that we should not do it.
>
> Let's give them and us one more chance do to well. This is the only
> way we can improve.

Do you mean we should be doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? Einstein may not like it, and I certainly don't.

What I gathered from the discussion so far is that everybody agrees that our mentoring has been suboptimal in various ways (not enough encouragement to engage with the community early, working in the cave for too long, biting too much to chew etc.). What makes you think we would do better this year?

"We have a track record of being not great at mentoring, and we haven't made an effort to improve it." is a perfectly valid and humble reason to excuse ourselves from this year's GSoC.

"Students are great" is immaterial.

In fact, if they are great, I think it is better to give them a chance to excel by working with organizations that can mentor them better, instead of squandering their time and GSoC's money for another failure, until _we_ are ready to take great students.

It is preferrable if the decision were accompanied with a concrete plan for us to prepare our mentoring capability better (if we want to participate in future GSoC, that is), but I think it is a separate issue, and I suspect that it is too late for this year's.