From: jbw <jbw@...>
Date: 2010-03-31T03:24:59+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Ruby Summer of Code 2010

Hi Jeremy,

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 6:18 PM, Jeremy Kemper <jeremy@bitsweat.net> wrote:
> Hi jbw,
>
> On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 9:02 AM, jbw <jbw@jbw.cc> wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 5:00 PM, jbw <jbw@jbw.cc> wrote:
>>> On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 4:48 PM, Roger Pack <rogerpack2005@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Jeremy Kemper wrote:
>>>>> Fellow Rubyists, I'm proud to announce the first annual Ruby Summer of
>>>>> Code.
>>>>>
>>>>> In the best tradition of Google's legendary summers of code, Ruby
>>>>> Central, Engine Yard [1], and the Rails team [2] have joined forces to
>>>>> muster a legend of our own, a new summer program for student Rubyists
>>>>> to flex their open source might.
>>>>>
>>>>> * Students are paid a $5000 stipend to work full-time during their
>>>>> summer break.
>>>>
>>>> One suggestion for future years might be to allow non-students.  Since
>>>> 1) we're not google SoC so we can, and 2) if somebody can do it full
>>>> time then why not...
>>>>
>>>
>> I think the goal of getting younger developers involved in open source
>> is important and allowing non-students might make it harder for
>> younger developers, that's with the assumption all young people are
>> students :p
>
> College-student status is a measure that has worked well for Google so
> we're cargo-culting and running with it this year. Primarily, it
> filters out professional developers who would treat the program as a
> three-month contract gig and gain nothing from it but a paycheck.

How will you stop this, if you even want to, then next time?

> But, there are many paths to discovering the joys of Ruby and open
> source participation. We're not huge fans of adding age and schooling
> discrimination on top of that.

Maybe the rsoc isn't one of those paths, but another type of soc for
non-students, professionals?
If professionals are able to participate I doubt as many people would
invest money if they're unsure on whether they're going to be
basically handing out pay checks to seasoned developers. I think it
would be in the investors interest to see more 'new' developers in the
future.

Google uses age and schooling as a measure to meet their goal of
getting more young developers involved, i guess
you have a different goals in mind which is cool :)

> So perhaps we treat it like the Olympics: amateurs only.
>
> Next year, I hope to see plumbers switching careers and retirees
> unlearning COBOL, too!
>
> jeremy
>
>

jbw