Rainy Google Summer of Code
So that was the Google Summer of Code. Well, somehow it was quite a bit of a “rainy” summer for me. I was so excited!
Yeah! I even got two students! Both projects I was hoping for got accepted. BCEL was supposed to get the JDK 1.5 and 1.6 support. Commmons jci was supposed to get more compilers and the
maven integration I was hoping for. Two students? Isn’t that too much work? Maybe? But they are even friends and can help each other out …and whatever it takes – I will
put in some extra hours …because I like the idea, because I am eager to get these contributions and even more important – new contributors.
So the past few months I was trying to get these two students to understand the open source way. Trying to introduce them to the communities. Trying to give them the experience that it is not just about code. Unfortunately nothing of that really happened. We had a good start. The first week was great …but after that: unanswered emails, going offline on IM when I go online, just ignoring requests for status reports. Some code and a total of less than 3 mails to the mailing lists. God knows I tried! The BCEL student did made good progress (BCEL with 1.5 support should be pretty much there) but in the end -looking at other projects- this was just not enough effort and commitment to let either of them pass. The sad thing is: I fear I was more disappointed and frustrated about this than they were.
I still believe in the program …but I’ve learned my lesson. Next summer I will only vote for exceptional proposals. People that show that they really know what they are applying for. People that have showed up first on the mailing lists. “That sounds interesting, I think I can do it” is just not good enough. Glad many of the other projects had more successful students.