[En-Nut-Discussion] Nut/OS and GSoC

[Harald Kipp]

Hi Thiago,

I was hoping that you'd jump in. :-)

On 2/24/2011 2:30 AM, Thiago A. Corrêa wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 2:06 PM, Harald Kipp<harald.kipp at egnite.de>  wrote:
>> I'd suggest, that our project should provide not less than 4-5 mentors.
>> Anybody else interested?
>
> I couldn't find exactly what mentors are required to do, but perhaps I
> can volunteer.

About a few hours per week would be required. You need to strongly 
advice and supervise the student, so he will find the right track. 
Anyway, I'm sure that the mailing list will help. A manual is available:

http://www.booki.cc/gsoc-mentoring/

Large text! To make it short: We have to do everything that the project 
will become a success, which means, that the resulting code will be 
useful for the community and hopefully maintained by the community in 
the future. The first step will be to carefully select the students.


> We need to figure out a list of ideas for students.

Right, Ole sent a few ideas already. This is not too easy, because the 
time for the student is limited.


>> Some time ago we loosely talked about establishing a legally
>> incorporated organization for Nut/OS. Although not required for applying
>> as a mentoring organization, may be it is a good time to think about
>> this idea again.
>
> What would that enable us? I'm not sure what are the advantages or down sides.

No doubt, the disadvantage is additional bureaucratic work, which 
developers naturally try to avoid.

The main advantage is, that the project will become less dependent of 
egnite, which may attract more users. During the last months I had been 
quite busy with other stuff and it's nice to see, that the project moves 
on, nevertheless. It seems important to me, that the community takes 
over more control. You may have noticed, that I already added a few 
long-term contributors to the admin list at sourceforge.

In case of GSoC I'd disclaim the 500$ paid by Google to the mentor. My 
company would also contribute Ethernut hardware. To handle this, it 
would be helpful to have a legally incorporated organization.

Soouuuu...for now we have 3 people announcing their interest. IMHO, it 
won't make much sense to move on until we have a few more. Note, that we 
should offer more than one project and that we need a backup mentor for 
each of them. Although it is possible to escort more than one project.

Regards,

Harald