Hey,
I'm Vishal, a student from IIT Kharagpur. I'm not extremely familiar
with the ReactOS ecosystem, but I like what I've seen so far. I'm a free
software enthusiast and can definitely see the benefits of having an
open-source (even if not considered Free/Libre Software by the FSF) OS
that can run Windows programs.
I want to help set up a student pipeline that helps students, hobby
programmers, etc., contribute to ROS and accelerate its development. I
have a general outline as to how this pipeline would work and involves
convincing professors and course instructors to include (mini)projects
and coursework that revolves around contributing to ROS. Apart from
this, a student group could be setup that revolves around contribution
to ReactOS (there are several students groups, headed by professors, in
my college that deal with topics ranging from robotics to machine learning).
To achieve this, I believe students need to be incentivized. Students
here often desire to have something worth mentioning on their resumes.
Instructors also wish to give better quality projects to students rather
than recycle old ones every year. I think a combination of all these can
be used to funnel at least a few ROS developers every year (even though
I'm not one right now). I'm aware of GSoC, and I feel it's not enough.
If the ROS community were to set up some sort of an incentive program
(not monetary), one that "officially" recognizes student contributions,
it could produce a stream of developers who could contribute heavily in
the future.
I can understand if some people in the community feel that interested
programmers will help them anyway and that the efforts that go
into this might not produce a proportionate result. But I think students
can be nudged towards ROS contribution by simple incentives such as
recognition. These outreach programs (not just limited to my college)
can, in my opinion, accelerate the development of ROS.
Thanks,
Vishal Subramanyam
