Re: Google Summer of Code 2007

[Yoshinori K. Okuji]

On Tuesday 13 March 2007 13:38, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
> Well I can always be hit by a bus or anything like that. But I hope it
> won't be necessary.

Last year, real procedures were always taught only to primary mentors, but not 
to backup mentors, IIRC. Hollis, weren't they? So I thought, then what is the 
meaning of having a backup mentor?

> We should come up with a idea list today, because tomorrow Google will
> begin accepting applications. I think we should just start with
> http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub-soc.html and remove the project
> I did last summer. I think all the other tasks still need to be
> done. New ideas are welcome too of course.

I agree. And this needs to be informed to the gnu's list, because what Google 
will see is the GNU's list but not ours.

http://www.gnu.org/software/soc-projects/ideas.html

> Personally I think one of the important things we have to do is making
> GRUB2 a suitable replacement for GRUB Legacy. This means implementing
> all the features from GRUB Legacy that GRUB2 doesn't have yet, making
> sure that the installer and other tools are all in a good state,
> etc. It's a bit difficult to make a task out of that, but IMHO it's
> time that GRUB2 gets ready for production use.

I fully agree, but I am afraid that this kind of task should be done by 
long-term contributors rather than newcomers, and SoC is not very suitable. 

The term of SoC is really short. IMO, it is long enough to implement some 
clear, straightforward and visible feature, but not for vague, complicated 
and tiresome work.

Anyway, our list just shows examples. Students are free to propose new ideas. 
In addition, we can obtain only one student from the past experience. If we 
are unlucky, we can get zero. So I think it is better not to bloat the list 
too much, but rather expect that students would think of something 
interesting themselves.

Okuji