[OSGeo-Discuss] Why participate on OSGeo-GSoC?

[Vicky Vergara]

Dear OSgeo Community and projects

I would like to express in this letter as a mission to encourage projects
either well established OSGeo Projects, Incubating Projects, and with a
stress emphasis to Community Projects that wish to become an OSGeo Project,
to participate in GSoC.

You can find the  announcement for the current year in [1]
[1] https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2021-January/039210.html

I can only speak based on experience, that is, my experience with pgRouting
on the GSoC program.

The way that pgRouting has grown in terms of code and in terms of
developers has been mainly by participating in GSoC, to a point where we
will soon apply to become an OSGeo Project. (hopefully this year).

In 2015 it was my first participation as a mentor, but since 2011 we have
been participating [2] with a grand total of 23 students. (to the best of
my knowledge)

[2] https://github.com/pgRouting/pgrouting/wiki/Google-Summer-of-Code

What is the "P/G-ain"? There is no "Gain" without "Pain"
(I quote because those are relative terms)

The "P/G-ain" as I see it:

The work as a mentor, year by year, does not become easier or harder, it is
just a matter of routine (and maybe some family time). Basically my routine
is Saturday morning (family is sleeping Saturday mornings) for at most 3
hours we have a GSoC meeting, depends on the case: with a student that is
struggling the most or with all students for a common problem, or no
meeting if everything is going smooth or family is awake :-)

Students open a draft PR  at the beginning of the week and merge their PR
at the end of the week on a special repository [3] for GSoC work. So
monitoring their work during the week really becomes with comments on their
PR as in [4] which can be done by any mentor.
[3] https://github.com/pgRouting/GSoC-pgRouting
[4] https://github.com/pgRouting/GSoC-pgRouting/pull/112

I think I spend more time with students during the bonding period (also
Saturday meetings) where they learn how is the structure of our repository
and what/where are the basics for adding more functionality to pgRouting.

The most difficult part we have as mentors is to choose the proposals to be
accepted.
>From the set of proposals, this year:
* Filter out proposals with Incomplete pgRouting application requirements
[5]
* Filter out proposals with incomplete OSGeo or GSoC requirements
* Give an evaluation number to the students
* Decide (based on number of mentors) how many proposals we can manage
* Send our evaluation & decision to the OSGeo-GSoC administrators, so they
can follow  the next step of the process with Google

[5]
https://github.com/pgRouting/pgrouting/wiki/GSoC-Ideas%3A-2021#pgrouting-application-requirements

The detailed benefits
- In terms of code
- In terms of collaborators
- In monetary terms -> OSGeo

In terms of Code
In the time that I arrived at pgRouting, v2.0.0 was the latest, I could
enumerate the  routing related function signatures that it had back in
those days, just because they are so few, but you can find them in [6].
That includes the internal functions that are used. Compare with what we
are preparing for v3.2 [7]: 32 VS 289 signatures (internal & public), and
most of the new functionality has been done by GSoC students.

[6]
https://github.com/pgRouting/pgrouting/blob/v2.6.3/sql/sigs/pgrouting--2.0.0.sig
[7]
https://github.com/pgRouting/pgrouting/blob/develop/sql/sigs/pgrouting--3.2.sig

In terms of collaborators:
Some students stay on the project after the GSoC, For example Rohith was
active, not only as a developer, but also as a speaker in FOSS4G Dar Es
Salaam.
Currently we have Ashish who is taking over the task of making releases.
Rajat whom I meet personally in Hyderabad on FOSS4G Asia before he became a
GSoC student, since last year he is one of the OSGeo-GSoC administrators,
he is also now a GSoC mentor, member of the PSC in MapMint, and he is
collaborating with the pgRouting workshop.

In monetary terms -> OSGeo:
Google deposits money per student  that finalizes the program to OSGeo.
In my mind, by doing mentor work we are making OSGeo get more income for
the year's needs. I donated my time as a mentor, OSGeo got a donation in
the form of $.

I see this money that OSGeo got from pgRouting students as a cooperation
for the OSGeo community projects budget that OSGeo assigns every year and
as a cooperation for the incubating expenses budget for the projects that
are in incubation the year when OSGeo received the money, of the year or as
a cooperation for other well established projects budget. (I did not
understand myself so I am putting an example).

Suppose that pgRouting had 3 students and suppose that OSGeo got a total of
$1500 on year X.
In my mind I think: For year X those $1500 are going to help on funding
project Y on its incubation expenses or community project Z on outreach
expenses to get more developers, or for OSGeo project W that has an
unexpected expense, or something I didn't think about were it could be used.

This year, as I mentioned, we are participating again, and hopefully apply
to incubator.
In my mind, the $ will help fund our own incubation expenses which we
calculate is going to be more than what OSGeo will get from pgRouting
participation on GSoC.
In my mind, we are cooperating by doing mentor work to get part of our own
funding for incubation this year.

Regards
Vicky
pgRouting mentor on the OSGeo-GSoC program
-- 

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Vicky Vergara
Operations Research

eMail: vicky at georepublic.de
Web: https://georepublic.info

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