On 2012-15-03 10:11 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
Certainly not. By all means, GSoC should be done to the best judgement of mentors and those who have the experience, of course... GIMP, for instance, wasn't accepted to GSoC in 2006 or 2007 (can't remember exactly) after it failed two projects out of seven. These days quite a lot of new features come from GSoC students, for some projects GSoC brings over 50% of new features. Would you impose the risk of failure by lowering the bar? Based on the thread title "[Gimp-developer] Easy access for contributors" and the initial message I was under the impression that we are talking about an idea of offering a "pre-built developer virtual machine, created with say SUSE factory and downloadable from the GIMP developers page" or similarly fashioned dev 'shortcut' and not GSoC. Did I get the context wrong? (wouldn't be the first time) If i did, please excuse me. If not... With that context in mind, it seemed like a worthy idea to provide such a thing to the public. Let the people download it, tinker with it in the privacy of their homes, let them play with it on their own and who knows... The ratio of failures would not matter to GIMP at all, but the successes would. It seemed to me that with a solid starting environment + the source (btw, is it open/free already? ;)).... the chances could be more in favor of reinforcements in the dev ranks. Additionally, in this scenario, I can see a lot of beginners asking a lot of beginner's questions and that might be annoying, but on the other hand, it would be easier to spot the promising ones... Now that I think of it... It's not unlike Apple or other 'entities' offering their dev packages, kits, etc. Out of the multitudes of failures there will be a success. Especially in the case of Apple, you can find a lot of personal blogs and tiny communities all over internet where learners are exchanging info and knowledge about stuff they find fascinating and 'cool' and amazing in toying with Xcode. Stuff that masters might find basic, or perhaps trivial. but still, it is important stuff. When learning, learners will hit the same obstacles the learners before have hit. While solving the problems, they will search the web and correlate easier with the info and explanations by those who are only one step ahead than with the wisdom of the experienced masters and sages... The (social) Force is strong with them younglings. Sure, a learner could pick an easier target first. GIMP is a fairly big bite, but still, them kids today sure are smart... So, this downloadable dev environment sounded really fine to me. I don't know whether it would be worth the effort. i.e. I am ignorant on how much effort it requires. Alex |