On Thu, 2012-02-09 at 00:12 +0000, Dr. David Kirkby wrote: > On 02/ 8/12 03:48 AM, William Stein wrote: > > Hi, > > > > Does anybody want to help put together a GSoC application for Sage for 2012? > > > > http://code.google.com/soc/ > > > > The application deadline is March 9. > > > > So far, I think we've applied 5 times to have Sage as a mentoring > > organizing, and been denied every time. I think there is no feedback > > about why we are denied (maybe they think we already have too much NSF > > funding?). > > > Lack of feedback is really annoying. Can't you get any unofficial feedback > via > telephone calls rather than email?
Axiom was chosen as one of the project for the first GSoC for about 24 hours, at which point it was dropped. I never did find out why. We did have projects under the LispNYC umbrella organization due to Goodman's efforts. > > > Also, other similar projects such as R, Sympy, PlanetMath, > > etc., have often been accepted as mentoring organizations. However, > > I don't think being denied every year is a reason to stop trying, > > because (1) our project is better than many of the projects Google > > chooses (they are just making a mistake by not choosing us), > > Perhaps that's not the wisest thing to state in public. > > I've had a couple of theories about why applications might fail. > > 1) Too mathematical, though that theory seems to have been dismissed, as I > gather other heavy maths has been funded. Axiom got selected but the effort was for a web-based notebook-style interface which is clearly not mathematical and, as you already know, is so wildly futuristic that it will likely never be achieved :-) > > 2) The Sage development process is not exactly a shining example of best > practice in software engineering. I once suggested you purchased some books > on > software engineering and handed out free copies to some of your developers, > since its clear some don't have a clue. So stretch a bit and propose a literate programming Sage example. I'd be willing to act as a Sage mentor for that. > > It's remotely possible Google see this, and would rather someone mentored in > a > different environment, which at least appears a bit different, even if in > fact > it is no less chaotic. I suspect that, like all things Google, they just get swamped by applications. Google funding applications are to NSF applications like Chatroulette is to dating. :-) It wouldn't surprise me to find out that they have automated the selection criteria just to deal with the volume. Tim Daly -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
