Google Summer of Code 2016

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biolizard89
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Google Summer of Code 2016

Post by biolizard89 »

GSoC mentor org application process opens Feb. 8, and closes Feb. 19. What needs to be done to prepare for this? Who should be the org admin and backup admin? We need to update the ideas page from last year.
Jeremy Rand, Lead Namecoin Application Engineer
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biolizard89
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Re: Google Summer of Code 2016

Post by biolizard89 »

biolizard89 wrote:GSoC mentor org application process opens Feb. 8, and closes Feb. 19. What needs to be done to prepare for this? Who should be the org admin and backup admin? We need to update the ideas page from last year.
https://wiki.namecoin.org/index.php?tit ... ject_Ideas

Please add comments; there are a number of discussion points I've added which are urgently in need of discussion. So far only Joseph and I have commented. We've got about a week.

I think I am okay with being the org admin, but it would be nice if Daniel could let me know what that role entails since I didn't do it the past 2 years. We still need a backup admin. Also, if I'm the org admin, can Daniel send me a copy of the org description that was submitted last year?

Cheers.
Jeremy Rand, Lead Namecoin Application Engineer
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josephbisch
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Re: Google Summer of Code 2016

Post by josephbisch »

The org admin is responsible for a number of things as described starting on this page.

You need to make the ideas page. Of course you will probably have to enlist the help of others like the mentors. This is something Namecoin is already doing.

You are responsible for the process whereby students and mentors are selected. The manual I linked to goes into more detail, so I won't go into too much detail. You will communicate with Google to determine the number of slots allocated to Namecoin and reconcile the number of projects that had students interested with the number of slots allocated if that number is less than the number of interested students. If there are multiple organizations that select a single student, then a representative (probably the org admin) from each organization have to attend the deduplication meeting to resolve the conflict (as each student can only do one GSoC project). You also use the Melange system for assigning mentors to projects and other activities.

You are also responsible for the org application.

You manage the mentors. Again, the guide goes into more detail. There should be a way for mentors to privately communicate with each other and with the org admin. Maybe a private irc channel or mailing list.

You set expectations for communication between students and mentors. For example, maybe the students need to post a weekly summary to a certain mailing list detailing their progress.

biolizard89
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Re: Google Summer of Code 2016

Post by biolizard89 »

Thanks Joseph. Sounds like significant work, but my summer is pretty much completely open this year, so shouldn't be a problem.
Jeremy Rand, Lead Namecoin Application Engineer
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biolizard89
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Re: Google Summer of Code 2016

Post by biolizard89 »

Well then. I opened this thread a month ago so that we could try to get things done ahead of time. Joseph is the only one who has assisted substantively in the past month. At this point, if we can only get 2 people to look at a wiki page or forum thread in a month, I don't think I can in good conscience recommend that we participate in GSoC this year. It is likely to be a negative experience for students if very few developers are paying attention. I hope that we participate next year, but as of now I am withdrawing my support for participating as a mentor org in 2016. This saddens me greatly, but I don't see any other options.
Jeremy Rand, Lead Namecoin Application Engineer
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DyName: Dynamic DNS update client for .bit domains.

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phelix
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Re: Google Summer of Code 2016

Post by phelix »

biolizard89 wrote:Well then. I opened this thread a month ago so that we could try to get things done ahead of time. Joseph is the only one who has assisted substantively in the past month. At this point, if we can only get 2 people to look at a wiki page or forum thread in a month, I don't think I can in good conscience recommend that we participate in GSoC this year. It is likely to be a negative experience for students if very few developers are paying attention. I hope that we participate next year, but as of now I am withdrawing my support for participating as a mentor org in 2016. This saddens me greatly, but I don't see any other options.
I never participated much in this as I always considered it a waste of time (besides we get a nice list of projects that we can put bounties on). It was very unlikely to get a foot in this door before and by now it is pretty clear it is not gonna happen anytime soon.
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drllau
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Re: Google Summer of Code 2016

Post by drllau »

> At this point, if we can only get 2 people to look at a wiki page or forum thread in a month, I don't think I can in good conscience recommend that we participate in GSoC this year.

I'd point out that a normal startup you'd only need the right mix of hacker, hustler and/or hipster to get going. I'm in Singapore right now and the SG govt is throwing $157 million into the ecosystem for a smart financial centre. I've just been chatting with David from Thailand who tells me there's a huge community of freelancers with core of ICT digital nomad tourists. What small core at the moment can work so long as there's some coordination.
In a panel session on Future of Money at EMTech Asia 2016 Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer of Monetary Authority of Singapore, outlined an initiative to collate and compare global transaction platfom APIs later this year. Whilst details have yet to be released, cyber security (including biometric authentication), cross-platform BigData compatibility and regulatory compliance (KYC, AML, privacy) are high on the list of concerns. This standards initiative will be more than a theoretical exercise as the newly formed FinTech Innovation Group (FTIG) are aggressive in proposing a sandbox for experiental learning where “relaxation” of regulations will allow real-world deployment as well as test interoperatbilty of FinTech initiatives.
OK ... the way i see it there's 3 basic roles
-hustler = admin Coordinator - fit students to mentors (and if necessary twist arm for volunteers)
-hacker = namecoin R&D "director/dictator" - basically final say on what projects are put forward

Looks like Joseph has stepped forward to hustle the hacker projects BioLizard89 has revised. I'm a little concerned about sustainability so if agreeable, I'll look into seeing whether can get some financial support and how many warm bodies up in Thailand might be able to spread the word. At minimum I'd be the hipster code trustee, ensuring proper open source licensing and if people are serious about anonymity, an cut-out which would be subject to legal privilege or commercial in confidence (if corporate side-project).

I can be pro-forma mentor (since I'm with jfdi.asia) and got extensive experience in high performance computing but I'm seriously short of time so I'd probably be more or an alt/sub if a formal mentor needs to take a break/holiday.

Yes, as phelix points out it may be a waste of time but the point is if nobody turns up, then other cryptocurrencies will put forward their pet ideas which don't follow the ethos behind namecoin. It may only be a nominal foot in door but best to not completely shut it, nak?

Some 1 week left, if Biolizard can use carte blanche to rightsize project scope/task and Joseph starts naming names and taking faces, I'll try promoting this to the enthusiasts in this timezon.

biolizard89
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Re: Google Summer of Code 2016

Post by biolizard89 »

phelix wrote:
biolizard89 wrote:Well then. I opened this thread a month ago so that we could try to get things done ahead of time. Joseph is the only one who has assisted substantively in the past month. At this point, if we can only get 2 people to look at a wiki page or forum thread in a month, I don't think I can in good conscience recommend that we participate in GSoC this year. It is likely to be a negative experience for students if very few developers are paying attention. I hope that we participate next year, but as of now I am withdrawing my support for participating as a mentor org in 2016. This saddens me greatly, but I don't see any other options.
I never participated much in this as I always considered it a waste of time (besides we get a nice list of projects that we can put bounties on). It was very unlikely to get a foot in this door before and by now it is pretty clear it is not gonna happen anytime soon.
I have no idea why you think this is a waste of time.

First off, the list of suggested projects has been useful. It's what I point new contributors to; I can think of several cases where it's been helpful for such cases. Most new contributors are not going to look through 20 forum threads to figure out what ideas match their interests and skill set. Even if we do not participate in GSoC this year, I would very much like to maintain the projects ideas page. The project ideas page is a prerequisite to GSoC, but the converse is not the case.

Second, it is not at all obvious to me that we wouldn't be accepted. A number of free speech and privacy orgs have been accepted in recent memory (off the top of my head, Tor, Freenet, Tox, even YaCy which competes with Google). I also was able to find 2 Bitcoin-related orgs which were accepted in the past 2 years (one in 2014 and one in 2015). When I represented Namecoin at the rejected orgs IRC meeting in 2014, about half of the orgs had substantive problems that Google pointed out. The rest (in which we were included) were rejected solely because there weren't enough slots for all the orgs that applied. (I can't speak for 2015 since Daniel represented us that year.) I have been informed that Google is actively choosing to reject orgs that have participated a lot before, for the sole reason of bringing in new orgs. That's why Tor was rejected in 2015, I believe.

Finally, I am completely at a loss as to how maintaining an ideas page is a waste of your time. It does not take much time to write a decent ideas page. In our case, all I requested was that the 10 or so questions I added to the page in bold get answers from other devs. How much of your time does this take? If we don't get accepted, everyone's time obligations end there. This is a very minimal investment unless we get accepted, in which case it's a substantial investment but has a large payoff.

How are you expecting to get funding? We can't expect to get nearly all of our funding from F2Pool. Even if F2Pool continues to have an interest in funding us, the political climate in China is uncertain and we should be diversifying our funding as much as possible. Tor is spending substantial effort getting away from the US govt being their sole sponsor for the same reason. (Not to mention the conflict of interest that comes with getting most of our funding from a mining pool that, theoretically speaking, could attack Namecoin tomorrow if they wanted to or were ordered to.)

If you had a problem with this, it would have been great for you to say so a month ago instead of staying silent until it was too late to discuss it.
Last edited by biolizard89 on Sat Feb 06, 2016 10:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Typos
Jeremy Rand, Lead Namecoin Application Engineer
NameID: id/jeremy
DyName: Dynamic DNS update client for .bit domains.

Donations: BTC 1EcUWRa9H6ZuWPkF3BDj6k4k1vCgv41ab8 ; NMC NFqbaS7ReiQ9MBmsowwcDSmp4iDznjmEh5

biolizard89
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Re: Google Summer of Code 2016

Post by biolizard89 »

drllau wrote:> At this point, if we can only get 2 people to look at a wiki page or forum thread in a month, I don't think I can in good conscience recommend that we participate in GSoC this year.

I'd point out that a normal startup you'd only need the right mix of hacker, hustler and/or hipster to get going. I'm in Singapore right now and the SG govt is throwing $157 million into the ecosystem for a smart financial centre. I've just been chatting with David from Thailand who tells me there's a huge community of freelancers with core of ICT digital nomad tourists. What small core at the moment can work so long as there's some coordination.
In a panel session on Future of Money at EMTech Asia 2016 Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer of Monetary Authority of Singapore, outlined an initiative to collate and compare global transaction platfom APIs later this year. Whilst details have yet to be released, cyber security (including biometric authentication), cross-platform BigData compatibility and regulatory compliance (KYC, AML, privacy) are high on the list of concerns. This standards initiative will be more than a theoretical exercise as the newly formed FinTech Innovation Group (FTIG) are aggressive in proposing a sandbox for experiental learning where “relaxation” of regulations will allow real-world deployment as well as test interoperatbilty of FinTech initiatives.
OK ... the way i see it there's 3 basic roles
-hustler = admin Coordinator - fit students to mentors (and if necessary twist arm for volunteers)
-hacker = namecoin R&D "director/dictator" - basically final say on what projects are put forward

Looks like Joseph has stepped forward to hustle the hacker projects BioLizard89 has revised. I'm a little concerned about sustainability so if agreeable, I'll look into seeing whether can get some financial support and how many warm bodies up in Thailand might be able to spread the word. At minimum I'd be the hipster code trustee, ensuring proper open source licensing and if people are serious about anonymity, an cut-out which would be subject to legal privilege or commercial in confidence (if corporate side-project).

I can be pro-forma mentor (since I'm with jfdi.asia) and got extensive experience in high performance computing but I'm seriously short of time so I'd probably be more or an alt/sub if a formal mentor needs to take a break/holiday.

Yes, as phelix points out it may be a waste of time but the point is if nobody turns up, then other cryptocurrencies will put forward their pet ideas which don't follow the ethos behind namecoin. It may only be a nominal foot in door but best to not completely shut it, nak?

Some 1 week left, if Biolizard can use carte blanche to rightsize project scope/task and Joseph starts naming names and taking faces, I'll try promoting this to the enthusiasts in this timezon.
I am unfortunately unable to spend the necessary time to get a GSoC org submission together in the current timeframe. So, I think Namecoin will have to wait for GSoC 2017.

However, I'd still love to discuss the ideas you suggest. Both because they might also be applicable to other fundraising and development opportunities than GSoC, and because figuring this stuff out now means less stuff to figure out next year. Maybe make a new thread for your suggestions?

Cheers.
Jeremy Rand, Lead Namecoin Application Engineer
NameID: id/jeremy
DyName: Dynamic DNS update client for .bit domains.

Donations: BTC 1EcUWRa9H6ZuWPkF3BDj6k4k1vCgv41ab8 ; NMC NFqbaS7ReiQ9MBmsowwcDSmp4iDznjmEh5

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