I should add that our community is very active (occasionally even aggressive) in providing feedback for ideas whether or not they came in as part of GSoC. As we see it, the Summer of Code is just a one reason to contribute among many others (a hobby, a full time job, religious commitment to a learning algorithm being others). That tends to correlate with ideas coming in a little less well formed (but not at all always thus) and with a slightly higher hand-holding requirement (but not much higher).
All of the students who have become committers for Mahout have been ones who provided a lot of their own impetus, or as we say in Apache land, scratch their own itch. On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 9:26 AM, Grant Ingersoll <gsing...@apache.org>wrote: > > Either way, it is a very valuable feature for us. > > +1. I would almost go so far as to say we very actively encourage students > to submit their own ideas. This is, after all, how open source works, no? > Scratch your own itch.
