No GSoC 2012
WordPress was rejected as a mentoring organization from GSoC for this summer. This is unexpected, as I spent some time during the application period talking with Carol (Smith, the GSoC administrator) about our proposed approach of building a release cycle around GSoC and making it a mentorship-focused release and she seemed to approve the idea.
We can still do a summer mentorship-focused release for 3.5 if we want to, though. We could pimp it as independent study for credit for college students and put more focus on non-student potential contributors, such as from the plugin/theme ranks. If nothing else, it would avoid the inevitable couple of students who are only in it for the $$. We’ll need to decide if we still want to do something along these lines, or if we don’t.
Why did we get rejected? We don’t know yet. I used last year’s successful application as a template. There will be a feedback meeting in a week or so, and Carol says to attend that when it is announced and we can find out why during that meeting.
Daniel Chatfield 6:20 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
That is very unexpected. I’m a student and would love to get involved
Brian Layman 6:20 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
Well that’s unexpected… If we are going to get feedback from that meeting, it probably won’t pay to spend time speculating on the reason right now…
Aaron D. Campbell 6:22 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
Mentorship-focused doesn’t sound that far from the teams setup we used for 3.4. The other advantage is that we can mentor any age, rather than restricting it to college students.
Jane Wells 6:26 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
Was planning to do that anyway. The GSoC part would have been a good push on external deadlines, though.
Kyriakos 8:45 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
Sounds like a good idea Aaron. There is a wider audience than college students that will like to participate and need the guide from a WordPress Guru.
drecodeam 6:26 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
This is seriously unexpected, but yet for us students the idea of the mentorship focused release is a nice option now, i would still love to get involved for this summers. One of the major advantages of GSoC program was the structured approach it puts the students in. If you can still chalk out such a plan, a lot of good work can still be done from the students who are deeply interested.
George 6:37 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
I think students who wanted to work with WordPress would contribute anyway. Will WordPress team still provide mentorship?
Stas Sușcov 7:22 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
This is debatable. WordPress is solid enough (probably that’s the reason why Google thought it doesn’t need help) to get a SoC or some sprints like it happened during 3.5 cycle.
I remember http://rubysoc.org and it’s a great example. I would help crowd-sourcing/mentor/contribute to some projects like bbPress/BuddyPress or why not Coursewa.re.
And many would do the same.
George 7:26 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
That would be great. I wanted too ask about BBs mentorship. You did a great job with Courseware, I’ve idea similar to Courseware, but not sure can it be done on top of your project. Maybe when you have time we can chat and discuss this.
Stas Sușcov 7:30 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
Thanks, sure, anytime.
George Stephanis 6:40 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
Still planning on keeping it to core contributions only, or possibly opening it up to plugins as well? The latter could get a bit messy paperwork-wise without a more consistent oversight if done for credits.
mitcho (Michael 芳貴 Erlewine) 6:44 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
I feel surprised and saddened by GSoC’s decision, but I agree that having a program to get new contributors more involved through some mentorship is a powerful thing that could continue outside of the purview of the GSoC program. I hope that does indeed happen.
Mert Yazicioglu 6:52 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
I wasn’t expecting that just like the others but I’m sure there are many people out there (like me) that would love to take part in a mentorship-focused release. Most of us students have more time than the core developers during the summer so I’m sure we can make great contributions.
This is certainly sad news but not a show-stopper in my opinion.
Kyriakos 7:05 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
Why unexpected? WordPress should see this coming. Is obvious that Google at some point would stop supporting competitors to its own products like WordPress is for Blogger and soon other organizations will follow. (Firefox>Chrome, ChromeOS competitors etc.)
Jane Wells 7:16 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
I don’t think that is the reason at all.
Jane Wells 7:17 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
Now that the list has been released, we are in good company… Drupal, Mozilla, and other big projects are out, also. There are only 54 organizations listed (vs 150+ in past years) and most look to be smaller ones.
Tunilame 7:42 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
But the list is getting longer with minutes (180 participating organizations marked, but only 73 shown ’till now), is that normal?
Jane Wells 7:51 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
My bad. Not all the orgs are listed yet, because they only show up on the list ( http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/program/accepted_orgs/google/gsoc2012 ) after they have filled in a post-acceptance profile. For all we know, Drupal, Mozilla, etc may have been acepted and we just weren’t. Will find out for sure at next week’s meeting.
Rafael Poveda - RaveN 11:14 am on March 17, 2012 Permalink
I think WordPress have enough support by companies to begin with your own WordPress Summer of Code without funding problems. As said before, it can be an excellent opportunity to allow more projects –not just students projects– and to focus in company-related issues too.
Egill Erlendsson 8:20 pm on March 20, 2012 Permalink
Drupal, Joomla, Mozilla, Wikimedia, Django are on the list of accepted organizations, which makes the decision even more interesting.
Kyriakos 7:21 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
Mozilla products are direct competitors to android (b2go) and chrome (firefox) etc This day was about to come Jane, Is quite anorthodox for a company to pay competitors to grow bigger stronger better.
Jane Wells 7:27 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
Leaving multiple comments with the same content is a good way to get marked as spam. We got it the first time. And completely disagree.
Kyriakos 7:38 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
And what is the reason for this kind of move from Google Jane according to your opinion?
Jane Wells 7:54 pm on March 16, 2012 Permalink
We will have to wait until the meeting next week to find out. We have participated for 5 years though, and are not exactly in need of the helping hand that GSoC offers.
Mert Yazicioglu 10:09 am on March 17, 2012 Permalink
Having a stronger competitor is a good thing, it motivates you to do greater things. GSoC is to get students more involved in Open Source and not Google or its products. Google is just trying to contribute to the growth of the Open Source ecosystem, that’s all.
And by the way, Mozilla is accepted so your argument is invalid in every possible way.
rhh 12:48 am on March 17, 2012 Permalink
GSoC rejection does not matter at all. In fact WP can have its own summer of code for all open source stuff, maybe in some other name. WP needs independent and unique branding, which it has but needs to be MORE. For example, Facebook have no mention of WP, neither Google in the form of small icons, logos, or the “like it” buttons, so WHY does WP needs that in its various properties/web estates?
First step towards shaking the unhealthy dominance by G,FB, Apple – be UNIQUE dear WP!
DrewAPicture 8:32 am on March 17, 2012 Permalink
It was probably all the jokes about Melange finally getting fixed.
Thorsten 10:39 am on March 17, 2012 Permalink
Bummer, nevertheless I would be happy to mentor any student who wants to do something “WordPress” during the summer.
Frederick Townes 12:51 pm on March 17, 2012 Permalink
This is a bit of a surprise for me, but what I can say is that there’s still an opportunity to drive innovation for WP. Whether it’s as transparent as it could be or not, there’s quite a bit of mentorship permeating this community and I agree with some of the prior commentors that this community has the means to “institutionalize” that mentorship in least in terms of manifesting those values in the form of it’s own program. As usual, it would set the bar in terms of culture for other open source groups as well, which is definitely not a bad thing (nor a small feat). So I’m all for an “internal” mentorship program (which can have quite few different possible legs).
Shibu Lijack 4:28 am on March 19, 2012 Permalink
I am extremely disappointed! Being a college student, I was eagerly waiting for GSOC’12. I thought for sure WP would be one of the mentoring organisations. So I started preparing months ago.. Developed quite a few plugins and themes. But how unfortunate! All my hopes and dreams shattered. I still wish WP could somehow get accepted into GSOC’12.
Jane Wells 3:57 pm on March 19, 2012 Permalink
There may not be a $5000 paycheck attached, but new contributors to core are always welcome.
Stas Sușcov 4:13 pm on March 19, 2012 Permalink
For students looking for WordPress GSoC projects, last two years Creative Commons were looking for a WordPress developer. I checked again and it looks like their WordPress RDFa plugin is still on their ToDo list:
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/RDFa_Plugin_for_WordPress
if you really-really want to help CC, I could be a lamb and even help you with my last year proposal draft (just to help you dig into what they were looking for)
Good luck!
mbijon 5:28 pm on May 3, 2012 Permalink
Any news yet on why we weren’t accepted this year?