GSoC final last meters

Dear GSoC students, dear mentors, dear Git list,

we have all gathered here to participate in the last sprint of the Google Summer of Code. A lot has happened during all that time. The Git community has seen "fresh meat", and there may have been a few being reminded of their first or second steps in Open Source looking back with a bit of envy.

We saw some of you students prosper from the hands-on discussions with a few of the brightest minds that Open Source has to offer.

We have seen good work, we have seen excellent work, but also work that does not fall into these categories, and also work that was not done.

As you might know, the week between the 11th of August and the 18th of same month is the week when the mentors have to give their evaluations about their students' work. The mentors are not allowed to base their evaluations on anything that might come after the deadline, but only on work completed by that time.

Now, dear students: it is not necessary to have all your work merged into git.git yet; indeed, the 1.6.0 release cycle is on, and you can hope at most for 'next', but not 'master'.

However, in order to hope for a good evaluation, it is necessary to have at least something that comes _close_ to being mergeable.

Dear mentors, now I come to you. Please make sure that you work with your students during those last days of the project, and help them reach their goal.

And when it comes to the evaluations, be honest: Google is extremely generous to provide us with funding for our students, but the students have to earn it. Every dollar that is spent undeservedly will be a dollar that is not given to other, more worthy Open Source activities.

To all of you who are neither GSoC students nor GSoC mentors: please help by reviewing and encouraging.

With those thoughts in mind, I wish us all a fun and frantic last days of the GSoC project, and I look forward to see you all even after the Summer has ended.

Ciao, Dscho