[Soc-coordination] Debian as a GSoC umbrella org?

[Steffen Möller]

Hi Arthur,

On 02/15/2011 02:30 PM, Obey Arthur Liu wrote:
> Hi,
> I saw this land in my mailbox this morning:
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-med/2011/02/msg00149.html
> That would mean running for GSoC with a separate "Debian Blends" org.

> A few things I'd note:
> - I believe getting accepted as a separate org is going to be very difficult

it was the initial announcement that mentioned that smaller organisations
shall apply. I had asked her and she liked the what I want to do, not
promising anything, of course.

I'd seek other ways to get there if the Debian Med folks turn out not to
be in favour of it.

> - We have so far largely avoided/not had many applications that are
> not related to the core of Debian

There is so much to do for the core of Debian. We can easily fill it.
The main motivation indeed was not to take any slots away from it.

The Debian Med (or Debian Blends if Debian Science also goes for it)
organisation would have some very different set of projects. And I am
very confident that Google would recognise those differences.

> An option to accommodate this would be to act as an umbrella org, much
> like KDE does for example.
> This has a few implications:
> - We'd require admins for suborganizations and potentially more work
> for core admins
> - We'd need to split slots between suborganizations as ranking is
> going to be done within suborganizations
> - We might get more slots overall
> - We'll cover a broader range of applications, with possibly less
> connection with Debian core
> 
> What is you opinion ? Would this be beneficial to the GSoC
> participation of Debian or would it be too much spread ?

I want to have some of the Debian associated projects as much as
possible connected to the daylife of the mentors. To my understanding
and past experience this is not possible with the more core-oriented
Debian tasks to the degree I would like to see it.

Conversely, having daytimers connect themselves to Debian more through
a GSoC project is kind of the best thing that can happen to the project.
An out-of-core organisation with GSoC would be platform to all those
who like to teach out of their regular profession. That specialisation
does not cost us much. It may not bring us much when the project fails.
But money could not buy it when it works.

I offer to do the Org stuff, happily passing it to you (but I do not
think that Google would want that) or to Mr Blend"Andreas if either
of you would like doing it. What we get from google would be forwarded
to Debian.

Best,

Steffen