[Haskell-cafe] Re: Extending the GSoC model

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi

Suggested by Andrew Wager on libraries@, moving to haskell-cafe@ since
its a really interesting idea and libraries is probably not the best
place for it.

>  Not sure if this is the best place to suggest this, but I was
>  wondering about the possibility of extending the model that we
>  currently use for Google's Summer of Code.
>
>  The benefits:
>  1.) A place to make suggestions for code you would never be able to
>  write, and somebody else might not think of
>  2.) A place to see what's being worked on, but not yet done
>  3.) A way for people who are less confident in their haskell-foo to find mentors
>  4.) A way for people who are more confident in their haskell-foo to
>  contribute without spending a ton of time hacking up actual code
>  5.) Overall, more (and higher-quality) libraries

And my thoughts:

1) I think as long as the suggestions are small improvements to
existing projects it could work really well. New projects are probably
less likely to work without the original author having the original
motivation. I have one of these for some of my projects:
http://code.google.com/p/ndmitchell/issues/list - a bug tracker works
quite well.

2) Bug trackers do this.

3, 4) Fantastic idea, coordinating via the IRC channel already gives
some of this, but it could be made more direct. Also having a specific
person to talk to, and to review/commit/integrate the work makes the
work more useful.

5) Always a great idea.

So I think these things could be achieved by integrating various bug
trackers, ensuring lots of projects on hackage have bug trackrs, and
some mailing list for people working on this to allow people to ask
for mentors and mentors to be available to respond. My guess that if
there are the people who want mentors, then mentors could be found -
but the other way round won't happen.

Thanks

Neil