Re: Git and GSoC 2013

Christian Couder [off-list ref] writes:

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 7:52 PM, Jonathan Nieder [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Jeff King wrote:

quoted

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.