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NetBSD and Google's Summer of Code

Posted by timothy on from the platform-agnostic dept.

ruipaulo writes "When Google announced the "Summer of Code", its program designed to introduce students to the world of open source software development, the NetBSD Project understood the value of this project and entered as a mentoring organization. Over a period of two weeks, students researched the list of possible projects and discussed their proposals on the public mailing lists and in private with developers and other users alike. After evaluating over 100 distinct applications, the NetBSD Foundation is now pleased to announce the list of projects that have been chosen. See the associated press release for all the details."

6 of 15 comments (clear)

  1. Other Projects by Nurgled · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Has there been posted a list of all of the accepted projects for all organisations yet? I was trying to find it on the mailing list but it doesn't seem that it has been announced yet. I'm curious to see what kinds of things people are going to be working on.

    1. Re:Other Projects by macshit · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There was a bit of a scandal on the debian mailing lists about this -- some people thought it would be cool for debian to participate, but apparently when they contacted google about it, google replied "ha ha, too late!!"

      It seems that essentially the guy in charge picked those projects he liked, and the public notice was more for appearance's sake than anything else ("Please apply from 3 to 3:05 am on a sunday morning, in the locked disused lavatory in the basement of an undisclosed location. Beware of the tiger.").

      --
      We live, as we dream -- alone....
    2. Re:Other Projects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      It wasn't just the time frame. If you looked at the stats given by google for the number of entries to each project and then the final list of how many projects for each mentoring organization, you'll notice something odd. Google loves KDE. The interesting thing is if you further look into KDE, you'll see only a few mentors were chosen several times. Any serious projects to extend/improve the user interface or features were denied. (my wife's kate improvement proposal included)

      Also, the time frame for them to annouce "winners" was moved several hours which caused additional problems. Many people actually stayed up all night waiting for an answer. This is all documented on the SoC discussion list.

      The canned letter given to losers could have been worded better. Its also convenient how many times they changed the rules. Why not let Debian participate? I found it odd how few Linux related projects were submitted. It almost seems intentional. I don't even care for Linux and think its odd. Since the rules were changed everywhere else, lets go for that too. They extended the submission deadline for projects which wasn't fair for people like me who managed to get it in days in advance. I had to compete with more people. The faq was changed from the time I read it to the end. The recommended submission format, etc. changed. They actually changed the rules AFTER the submission deadline! Many people who wrote lengthly proposals never had their uri's looked at. They checked on the SoC list and Chris there actually said it was ok.. but no one looked. I think it was just a random selection or a selective one for projects their preferred. It just doesn't seem right.

  2. Yeehaw! by The+Nine · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm actually rather excited about this. NetBSD is turning into a damn fine operating system. The 2.0 release was really special. 3.0 is coming up soon (end of July, or that's the plan). Now, thanks to google, the project has a little extra developer muscle for upcoming releases. I really look forward to the near future releases of NetBSD. Hopefully things will just keep getting better!

    1. Re:Yeehaw! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Been using netBSD on my old Macs since version 0.something. Each release has been significantly better than the previous one IMO. THe netBSD community has been amazing to me. Just picked up a Sun Ultra 10 with 2 monitors for $60.00 (WooT!) and I think it will become my next netBSD box...

    2. Re:Yeehaw! by The+Nine · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm relatively new to NetBSD, but have really loved my whole experience thus far. I can only take other people's word for the fact that 2.0 was a huge improvement over 1.6, but I can definitely say that 2.0 has been a genuine pleasure for me to use, and I'm in the process of switching most of my boxes over to it. I was more than happy to make a substantial donation when they asked recently. Here's hoping they keep the good stuff coming!