3:40 p.m.
(dash123 posted an analysis on these two projects, and I wanted to make
sure it got in to the discussion, being useful stuff.)
Since most of us are familiar with how GSOC works, I thought it better
to compare rubysoc and JSOP in terms of their differences with GSOC.
About RubySOC:
The main highlight of their is that they have an extremely concise and
well-structured site. Everything is neatly divided into students,
Mentors , Sponsors, Community.
1. Mass communication/marketing by using Twitter, Reddit,
digg.(twitter: @rubysoc)
2.For mentoring orgs, the site says: "The number of mentoring
organizations depends on the number of sponsors the program receives;
all funding will go towards adding more mentors and students to the
program."
3. Projects are evaluated by each student's mentor, and then reviewed
by the larger mentor pool.(similar to GSOC)
4. They have given a larger time window for student applications(18
days- 5th Apr to 23rd). This is in contrast to GSOC's 11 days. The
mentor application period has closed already(on 2nd April) so no idea
on how long that lasted.
#
5. Since rubysoc is similar to GSOC's umbrella organisation structure,
they have already given out what the Application questions will
be. This is beneficial as students now know what areas of their
application they have to focus on.
6. The ideas list right now links to only JRuby and Rails wiki(both of
which have long list of ideas).
7. Under their "community" heading they have said that students will
get to receive free admission to RubyConf and a small speaking slot to
showcase their work.
8. Funding source: funding sources include web-service providers(like
Engine Yard), publishers(O'Reilley), IDE(like Aptana). In fact they
are asking for the "common man" to pool in. They then have a nice
"Sponsors" page which lists out all their sponsors(including the
"common man")
We could do something similar by going after sponsors/users who use
JBoss Middleware, RHEL, etc in a big way.
About JSOP(Joomla Student outreach Program):
1. Their main page is at
http://docs.joomla.org/Joomla!_Student_Outreach_Program_Project_Ideas
2. They want to students to take part in larger projects as teams of
students and mentors. This is at variance with GSOC where most of the
students work on a small parts of a big project or on new
projects. Communication across different students is rarely extensive
in GSOC's case.
The idea which we can get from this is to have brownie points for
students applying as teams(or we team them up as part of the
process). This way we ensure cooperation, sharing of code, ideas,
etc. Students get to learn the core values of open source projects
this way.
3. They also talk about Small task projects which can be worked on by
individuals but right now there are no ideas listed under that
heading. So I'm assuming they aren't interested much in "individual"
projects.
4. They don't talk about funding at all. The site says: "we will
figure out some fun rewards, like awarding t-shirts or other Joomla!
stuff. Also, we will issue official certificates to students who
successfully contribute to either program."
5. They haven't announced any dates yet. Also there have been no
discussion on their official discussion group(
http://groups.google.com/group/joomla-student-outreach-program ) since
31st March. The wiki was last edited(by a mentor) on 31st April so
maybe there has been a lull in their enthusiasm.
--
name: Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Community Gardener
team: Red Hat Community Architecture
uri: http://TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki
gpg: AD0E0C41