Re: foundation application..

[meg ford <meg387 gmail com>]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 9:42 AM, Tobias Mueller <muelli cryptobitch de> wrote:

Right, but as I've said, it's not a general answer and applications are dealt
with on a case-by-case basis.

In that case, I suggest that we don't make general statements telling interns to not apply, but instead tell them that it's case-by-case.  

I know of only one case where a GSoC student was rejected with the justification
of us only accepting GSoCers only after two months after the internship.
In this case though, the student applied one week after the internship had
started (i.e. not even ended yet).  Previous contributions were not identified.
I haven't sent the rejection letter myself, but I would have done the same,
rather than saying that the contributions weren't non-trivial enough just yet.

I agree that someone applying after one week (regardless of who they are) shouldn't be accepted. 

For reasons outlined in this thread, I think it's a good advise to not accept
people who have just joined the community.  I think that, in order to identify
with GNOME, the GNOME community, and the GNOME Foundation, a few months should have
passed.  Of course, I wouldn't think of it as being set in stone, but rather a
guidance.

As Cosimo mentioned in his comment, I think that interns may or may not have become sufficiently involved in the community over the course of the first three months. As German mentioned, sometimes interns do not have any patches accepted (I didn't have any accepted during my first internship -- which made me seriously annoyed and motivated me to keep trying until I did succeed). In that case, asking the interns to stay on and continue to contribute before applying makes sense In every case I think. In the case of interns who have e.g. started to take on extra responsibility within the community during their internship period, I think that having wording which might discourage them from applying is a mistake.