Re: [ros-dev] Google Summer of Code

[François Revol]

Hi,

>   I'd like to let you know our application has not
> been accepted into  
>  Google Summer of Code, for the third time in a row. I attached an  
>  (autogenerated) reply, which encourages us to reapply for future  
>  instances of the program. I would not find a better way to express  
>  sarcasm than asking us to reapply in future. 
It's indeed sad to know ReactOS didn't make it.

>   Our friendly OS project Haiku gets accepted every
> year, so being an  
>  OS is not a problem.
>  Wine is certainly accepted every year from the beginning, and this  
>  year is not an exception. So it's definately not a problem of "legal  
>  fear" of Microsoft. 
In the same spirit of sharing from the FOSDEM invitation, I'm sure we 
could find some projects on Haiku that would benefit ReactOS as well.
Some time ago I talked about the webcam driver I wrote, which could 
likely be made portable. Another developer already started adding UVC 
support to it, so it'd likely be interesting to ROS as well.

I'd suggest looking for projects you'd be interested in on
http://dev.haiku-os.org/wiki/GoogleSummerOfCodeIdeas
The students pick the ones they want but likely we could put them first 
on our wish list.

An other topic of interest could be the network drivers we ported from 
FreeBSD, likely you could take inspiration from our compatibility 
layer.


Also, something that seemed to appeal to Google last year was our 
attempt at extending the allocated GSoC slots by running our own funded 
HCD (Haiku Code Drive), to sponsor some more projects.
see:
http://www.haiku-os.org/tags/hcd2008_0

Surely running your own event would entice Google to value your own 
investment and reconsider for next year.

>   What is the problem then? I leave it to you to decide
> what's the  
>  problem. However, as for me, I see Google Summer of Code is nothing  
>  close to supporting free software world, but rather an expensive way  
>  of advertising. 
Undoubtedly it gives them a lot of advertising, but I do hope there is 
more to it :)

François.