[AUUG-Talk]: Creating a 'Google Summer of Code' for CS/SE in Australian Uni's

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Tuesday,  1 July 2008 at 12:13:26 +1000, steve jenkin wrote:
> I created an exchange on the CLUG list, that ended with a response from
> Arjen (incl projects proto-list):
> ...

Excellent idea.

> The idea of having undergrad students learn by working on real code
> has some appeal. Especially getting the best & brightest
> contributing their work and used to contributing to FOSS.

Modulo the free software requirement, this sounds very much like the
aims of the John Lions Award (about which I have heard no more).  It
would be nice to have that as a double incentive.

> There were real problems raised that need to be addressed before
> something can happen:
>
>  - the idea has to be promoted to lecturers.
>     - But how to reach them?
>
>  - it has to be *easy* for lecturers to adopt
>     - at least a Wiki

There are academics on this list who will hopefully answer these
questions.

>  - candidate projects have to be *small* for undergrads
>     - conversely, postgrad courses could engage larger FOSS projects

My recollection is that it's up to the candidates to come up with an
idea.  But various free software projects have suggestions; for
FreeBSD, they're at http://www.freebsd.org/projects/summerofcode.html

The obvious question is: must this be limited to undergrads?  For the
Lions award, yes.  But can AUUG (is it still extant?  Is there a new
board?) do something to raise the awareness more generally?

> Where are the free resources to run an effort like this?  Can it all
> be done in Sourceforge?

What resources are needed?  The only thing that springs to mind is a
source repository, and we could do that on the AUUG web site if we
could find somebody prepared to maintain it (in my experience, no more
work than accessing Sourceforge).

On a more immediate level, aren't we a little late for this?  Again
from FreeBSD, the candidates were announced
(http://www.freebsd.org/projects/summerofcode-2008.html) on 24 April.
We may have to wait for next year.

Greg
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