Re: [boost] A possible GSOC 2011 proposal idea

Subject: Re: [boost] A possible GSOC 2011 proposal idea
From: Andrew Sutton (asutton.list_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-03-21 09:56:43

>> In 3 moths? Absolutely! But I'm not terribly worried about that. If
>> Chad good submits a proposal with reasonable goals, I'd be more than
>> happy to fund the proposal.
>
> Hmmm- two orders of magnitude = 100 so I was saying that that such
> a job would be 100 weeks.  My real point is that to be accepted into boost,
> a library pretty much has to be demonstrably better than any
> opensource/openlicense
> alternative.  I'm not making a judgment on this, it's just the way that I
> see the review
> process working.

"Reasonable goals" means that the the proposed work can be finished,
to the satisfaction of the student's mentor, over the course of the
summer. Students that want to build new libraries for Boost need to
realize that it's not a 3 month process. I think that we've been
pretty clear about that in the past, and we've also helped students
prune down their expectations.

> I should note that many (most) of the GSOC proposals
> have failed to enter boost because the effort was way underestimated.

It's not helpful to measure failure by this yardstick because
otherwise we'd be probably looking at a near 100% failure rate for
each summer. Long-term (over the course of 2-3 years), that rate may
drop to 90%. It's unlikely that these patterns will change in the
foreseeable future.

Because of that, and because of the fact that only 4 of 5 people
suggested projects this year, I'm more than happy to take "toy
projects"---as long as there's a mentor willing work with the student.
If the student is willing to commit to work beyond the summer time
frame, then I would consider that a success.

> PS "I'd be more than happy to fund the proposal."
>
> Where can I line up for some of this?

You have to be at least 18 years of age, have been registered as a
full-time student over the past year, and submit (and have accepted) a
proposal to a mentoring organization. Funding is provided by Google,
but assigned by the mentoring organization.

Andrew