On Fri Ross Gardler <rgard...@apache.org> wrote: > It was therefore agreed that there is a real need for the academic > sector to get to grips with Hadoop. Having large data sets and > practical applications such as these would undoubtedly help the > Hadoop project in terms of testing and validation. It's hoped that > there would eventually be code contributions from the sector too.
At least here in Berlin (TU Berlin as well as HPI Potsdam) there is interest in contributing back to the community (in this case the Hadoop and the Mahout community). Currently it is mostly student projects done during labs that people (lecturers as well as some students) are interested in contributing. I told them about the ASF mentoring program already. I have been talking to several local people, there are two to three problems usually encountered in the academic sector: 1) Doing open source work does not give you any credits for your scientific carrier, so there is little incentive to contribute back or to release your work under an open source license. I personally have no great idea how this problem could be fixed except through finding interested individuals, discussing the advantages of free software in general and personal participation in open source projects in particular. 2) People are not really familiar with how to contribute to projects. So there is a need for mentoring, explaining and getting the word out. 3) Some people are not familiar with the transparent, public model of communication in most open source projects, especially here at the ASF. Again, fixing this problem probably needs quite a bit of explanation and "getting used to". Me personally, I made the experience, that it is comparably easy to get students convinced. It does get a little harder with PhD. students but is still possible. General lack of time when working on a PhD. adds to the problems. Isabel
