I agree with Luciano that GSoC students should practice working with open source project as other contributors do. IMO, most of existing open source projects don't grant write access to the contributors right away. Going through the patch process is a typical approach for contributors to engage with the community. By my own experience, it usually gives me a sense of achievement if the patches are reviewed and applied.
Some SCM tools make the patching process even more simpler. For example, github allows the developers to clone the repository and request to merge their changes in the streamlined fashion. It would be attractive if ASF provides some infrastructure toward simpler collaborations. Thanks, Raymond ________________________________________________________________ Raymond Feng rf...@apache.org Apache Tuscany PMC member and committer: tuscany.apache.org Co-author of Tuscany SCA In Action book: www.tuscanyinaction.com Personal Web Site: www.enjoyjava.com ________________________________________________________________ On Jul 23, 2011, at 11:15 AM, Luciano Resende wrote: > On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 1:44 PM, Ross Gardler > <rgard...@opendirective.com> wrote: >> On 21 July 2011 10:24, Bertrand Delacretaz <bdelacre...@apache.org> wrote: >>> Hi, >>> >>> On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 8:44 AM, Luciano Resende <luckbr1...@gmail.com> >>> wrote: >>>> It looks like various Apache projects are voting GSoC students as >>>> "partial committers". As Apache does not have a formal process for >>>> handling this type of account requests, regular accounts are created >>>> for these students, with an Apache e-mail alias, and access is given >>>> to general committer areas in SVN (e.g. committer area in svn, etc) >>>> and then respective PMCs provides write access to particular areas in >>>> SVN, such as a sandbox or a collaboration area. If the student fails >>>> the GSoC programm, or is not elected as regular committer during or >>>> after the program, there is no process for disabling/deleting these >>>> accounts. This is very problematic and can cause multiple issues.... >>> >>> I'd say those are temporary accounts rather than partial, and from the >>> GSoC point of view I think it's good to have them. >> >> As long as we ensure they are really temporary I agree. >> >> Personally I feel that GSoC students should earn commit access just >> like anyone else. However, being a mentor is a time consuming task and >> we have to balance mentoring effort against the payback they get. We >> can also argue that the evaluation process is, when done right, is >> almost as rigorous as the process of becoming a committer. >> >> I think it is important to ensure mentors and PMCs get to choose the >> way they work with GSoC students. Personally I will still require >> students to submit regular patches but I don't feel we should dictate >> that practice. >> > > That's my view as well, one of the ideas is that the GSoC will give > the student experience working on open source, and I don't believe the > regular open source experience is to give write access to source > repository for every initial contributor. Having said that, I have > seen others say that they want to provide write access to the > students, but then this access should be restricted to a branch or to > a isolated code, to me, this still isolates and don't foster > integration with the project community that will be paying much more > attention and reviewing contributions to the trunk. In the past, most > of the students I mentored ended upping getting committership on the > projects they participated after a initial period of patches > contributions and community interaction. > > Having said that, I'm yet to really receive any complaints and > requests from the GSoC Students where they say they are not being > productive by providing patches, etc... So i tend to think this is a > way for the mentors to avoid having to review and apply patches. > >>> One suggestion would be to add those accounts to a special LDAP group >>> named "trainee" or something. Once GSoC ends, someone (GSoC admins or >>> comdev PMC) would need to request infra to disable all of them. If a >>> student is voted in as a committer in the meantime, their PMC chair >>> would just remove them from the "trainee" group. >> >> +1 >> > > +1, I think that, for those projects that want to provide these > accounts for the GSoC students, this is a good process with the > addition that they shouldn't have access to committer area as > suggested by Kathey. > > > -- > Luciano Resende > http://people.apache.org/~lresende > http://twitter.com/lresende1975 > http://lresende.blogspot.com/
