Brainstorm ML and Ubuntu's own summer of code?

[Alan McGovern]

>  I would also like to take this opportunity to introduce an idea that I
>  see as a natural follow-up to the Brainstorm website: an event similar
>  to the Google Summer of Code, that would be launched every development
>  cycle. Basically the concept would be similar to GSoC except that the
>  motivation factor would not be money but the fact that the
>  contribution would be included in Ubuntu's next version (granted it is
>  completed on time).

Hi,

I'm speaking as someone who has taken part in the SoC as both a
student and a mentor. From what i've seen, a SoC project always ends
with the possibility of your code being bundled as part of a
distribution or as part of an existing application. There's also the
added bonus that you will be paid to do that. Taking mono as an
example, at least 2/3's of the 2006 projects ended up shipping in
various Linux distros or as part of mono itself. A similar percentage
of the 2007 projects resulted in actively shipped code aswell. I'd
like to think that this is one of the primary motivation factors in
the SoC, with money being the added bonus. So the ubuntu SoC doesn't
offer anything more than the google SoC does.

I know ubuntu was a mentoring organisation in the past (it doesn't
seem to be this year, why not?), but i have no idea of the success
rate of its projects. If the projects haven't resulted in actively
shipped code, maybe it'd be worth looking into the reasons why that
happened.

Finally, i'm not saying it's a bad idea, i'm just wondering if it'd be
worth trying to get more slots as part of the google SoC aswell.
That'd definitely help draw in new people.

Alan.