[Haskell-cafe] reddit.com/r/haskell_proposals: Relevance to Google Summer of Code?

[fallintothis]

NOTE: This message was originally posted to the subreddit in question
(and has been slightly modified), where I was told that I should post
the question on haskell-cafe.  See
http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_proposals/comments/847by/ask_relevance_to_google_summer_of_code/

I'm currently researching the possibility of applying for the Google
Summer of Code[1] and (by way of dons's post[2]) have found myself
perusing the Haskell Proposals subreddit for project ideas. As an
accepted MS CS student, I've spent my undergraduate life annoying
professors by using a slew of different programming languages -- most
recently, Haskell. While not altogether unfamiliar with the language,
I rather doubt (or at least try to honestly question) how useful a
contributor I'd be to some of the larger projects that have been
posted (e.g., the Immix garbage collector[3] or loop unrolling[4]),
despite some of their acceptances as tickets on the Summer of Code
Trac[5] and my deep interest in compiler & language theory. There are
projects that match other interests of mine and (in my approximation)
my experience level, but they also tend to be smaller. For example,
the reddit-alike[6] or wiki-embedded Haddock[7].

So, background sap-story notwithstanding, I suppose my general
question is: with respect to the aforementioned Summer of Code post,
is this subreddit meant to be a place for appropriate SoC projects? It
doesn't feel quite like it is, but I would be excited to work on some
of those that I indicated. The telltale sign for a project's
worthiness seems to be that a ticket is already opened on the Trac
that spells out the appropriateness, but this is limiting. More
obviously, to test the fitness of a project, should the idea be opened
as a ticket for the cursory review of others? Should someone who wants
to do Summer of Code work be at any particular level of experience
("dive into GHC's backend" versus "use Haskell to hack on a project")?
Intuitively, 1 summer's worth of work could probably be found in any
corner of code that meshes with any student's expertise and interests
-- even a reddit-alike can actually be a lot of work. But the catch
(for me) is that when familiarity is relatively low, it's hard to come
up with such ideas. I realize that applications are competitive
against other students, so the range of acceptable submissions would
depend more on the other applicants, but I think it's also important
to address haskell.org's ethos with regards to who they're looking
for.

If there's a more appropriate place to post this question (ha!
singular) I'm more than happy to transplant it.

[1] http://code.google.com/soc/
[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7zfog/anybody_done_the_google_summer_of_code_your/c07twkd
[3] http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_proposals/comments/7wjsc/implement_the_immix_garbage_collector_in_ghc/
[4] http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_proposals/comments/7z1uf/implement_loop_unrolling_for_c_level_loops_in_ghc/
[5] http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/summer-of-code/wiki/Soc2009
[6] http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_proposals/comments/7u48x/a_simple_redditlike_happsbased_proposal_voting/
[7] http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_proposals/comments/7qnwq/haddock_with_embedded_wiki_feature_a_la_rwh_so_we/