Working directly for DFBSD

[Justin Sherrill]

I'll point out that the primary reason we didn't have more projects is
because we just didn't get enough slots from Google for them all.  I
would have liked to see your project, but it, and other good ideas,
just didn't make the cut.

We have twice as many slots as we had last year, which is nice, but we
had an even greater increase in interesting projects.

In any case, I'd like to see you work.  I wouldn't be a good mentor
for this, unfortunately.  If nobody is able to step forward, I'd still
like to see you work on it.  This is a two-edged sword - you don't
have any deadlines or external pressures on your work.  On the other
hand, you aren't guaranteed attention from the other people involved,
depending on what they are doing.   Plus, no deadlines.  (Though I bet
if you did complete this on the Google timeline, we could get a shirt
out of it.)

The resources you can get, either way:

- EFNet #dragonfly IRC usually has people available.  It seems to be
busiest around 1200-1500UTC, I think.

- This mailing list.

- A leaf account.  Send your public key to Matt with the username you
want, and he can create an account on leaf.dragonflybsd.org.  The
machine is pretty beefy, and you can even use vkernels to test out
ideas.

I can't guarantee you'll always get answers from people in the project
by email or IRC; nobody else has that guarantee either.  Don't let it
slow you.


On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 1:24 PM, Kedar Soparkar <kedarsoparkar at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> You may remember me as one of the students who applied for the i386
> ABI Implementation project under GSOC.
>
> Unfortunately, due to a variety of reasons (some of which have already
> been pointed out), I could not get selected.
>
> Some of the major points:
>
> 1. I did not interact significantly on the mailing list (besides
> cheekily asking for comments on my proposal).
> 2. I had not contributed in any way to DFBSD prior to the proposal stage.
> (Feel free to add more in succession)
>
> Irrespective of the results, I still intend to continue with the
> project. My primary motivation for taking it up was to contribute to
> something practical & real-life, as opposed to just working on
> assignments in college courses (although, I must admit that the moolah
> & the t-shirt were also enticing :) ) As I can still gain a summer's
> worth of experience & hopefully come out with a working solution for
> DFBSD, it looks like a win-win situation, for both, the DragonFly
> community & me.
>
> Since I'm no longer bound by the GSOC timeline, I will simply offset
> the work to begin on 15th of June, after dealing with my GRE exam.
> Everything else regarding the schedule shall remain unchanged.
>
> Now to matters of more import:
>
> I know that the DragonFly community is stretched as it is due to GSOC
> work, so I wanted to ask whether I can request for a mentor of sorts
> during this period. Although I am sure I can count on the IRC & the
> mailing list for answers, it would be reassuring to know that someone
> is equally interested in getting this project done, besides me.
>
> This would also be the ideal time to let me know if someone has
> already started work on this idea, or for whatever reason, doesn't
> want me to work on this idea.
>
> Regards,
> Kedar.
>