last call for mentors, I need to apply by Fri. right now I only have Neil listed as a mentor.
1. Describe your organization. The Metalink Project is dedicated to improving downloads. Metalink increases the effectiveness and efficiency of downloads by combining the speed, bandwidth distribution, and redundancy of an optimized hybrid mirror/peer-to-peer network, without any questions of legality, integrity, or safety. The Metalink open specification has been adopted by over 40 programs, such as DownThemAll! (a Firefox extension), KGet (the native download manager of KDE), and many others. We promote the adoption of Metalink and coordinate the efforts of a small group of talented volunteers who program and troubleshoot new releases. We feel improving downloads is important since downloads are integral to distribution on the internet, especially with open source projects. An investment in Metalink improves all the other projects that use it, regardless of size such as KDE, openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, and OpenOffice. 2. Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2008? What do you hope to gain by participating? Our organization is currently managed and staffed by talented programmers who provide the link between programs run by their employers or who have volunteered to work unpaid on necessary programming. Using only volunteer staff means the items on our "ideas page" are left undone until a person lines up the time and interest to work on it. Additional programmers, working with scheduled concrete goals, will improve Metalink and help spread the word about it. Interaction between mentors and students should invigorate the whole project and may result in new ideas. On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 12:35 AM, Ant Bryan <[email protected]> wrote: > > I'm hoping to get some input from people. we have from March 9-13 to > apply... > > http://socghop.appspot.com/ > > here's our application that almost got us in last year: > > 1. Describe your organization. > > The Metalink Project is dedicated to improving downloads. Metalink > increases the effectiveness and efficiency of downloads. > It combines the speed, bandwidth distribution, and > redundancy of an optimized hybrid mirror/peer-to-peer network, without > any questions of legality, integrity, or safety. The Metalink open > specification has been adopted by over 40 programs, such as > DownThemAll!, a Firefox extension, and KGet, the native download > manager of KDE, and many others. > > Currently, I manage the Metalink Project by promoting the adoption of > Metalink, coordinating the efforts of a small group of talented > volunteers who program and troubleshoot new releases. We feel > improving downloads is important since downloads are integral to > distribution on the internet, especially with open source projects. > > > > 2. Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2008? > What do you hope to gain by participating? > > The Project is currently managed and staffed by talented programmers > who provide the link between programs run by their employers or who > have volunteered to work unpaid on necessary programming. Using only > volunteer staff means the items on our "ideas page" still need to be > done. Additional programming, based on scheduled concrete goals, will > improve Metalink and acceptance will be increased. > > Interaction between mentors and students should invigorate the whole > project and may result in new ideas. > > 3. Did your organization participate in past GSoCs? If so, please > summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your > participation. > > No. > > 4. If your organization has not previously participated in GSoC, > have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)? > > We applied in 2006, 2007, and 2008. > > 5. Who will your organization administrator be? Please include > Google Account information. > > Anthony Bryan [email protected] > > 6. What license(s) does your project use? > > GPL, but other projects that are integrating Metalink support should > use the appropriate licenses. > > 7. What is the URL for your ideas page? > > http://groups.google.com/group/metalink-discussion/web/gsoc08-ideas > > 8. What is the main development mailing list or forum for your > organization? > > [email protected] > http://groups.google.com/group/metalink-discussion > > 9. What is the main IRC channel for your organization? > > #metalink on Freenode > > 10. Does your organization have an application template you would > like to see students use? If so, please provide it now. > > Name: > Nickname: (what you prefer being called): > Email: > IM accounts: > Blog: > City, State/Province, Country: > Education/School: > Experience: > Programming languages: > Code samples: > What about our project interests you? > > 13. What criteria did you use to select these individuals as mentors? > Please be as specific as possible. > > I have selected people who have been working with us for a while and > have been stable, dedicated, and consistent. They are also great > coders, devoted to improving their programs, they pay attention to > user feedback, and are aggressively working to push our project > forward. > > 14. What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students? > > I am not sure what you mean by "dealing with disappearing students." > If you mean, how will we handle the work they were supposed to do, it > will stay on the to do list until one of us can do it. If any code > has been > submitted, we would salvage as much as possible. If you mean, how > will we find the student, we will have all of their contact > information and try to get in touch with them. If they do not > respond, we would report the loss to our Google liaison and the lapse > would be considered in their evaluation. > > 15. What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors? > > Despite the fact that these mentors have been extremely reliable, > emergencies happen. We have backup mentors who will take over. > > 16. What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with > your project's community before, during and after the program? > > Our community uses mailing lists, wikis, IM, and IRC to > communicate and coordinate. We would include the students in those. > They will participate in our dialogs and good suggestions will be > incorporated. We're a group of open, friendly people doing > interesting work. > > 17. What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with > the project after GSoC concludes? > > Hopefully the students will show a strong genuine interest in our > project, not just in getting paid. We will be grateful for their help > in providing solutions to real challenges. We will encourage the > students to be involved in the process, and hope they will volunteer > to work at their own pace after the Summer of Code finishes. We would > be pleased if the students list us on their resume and we will > provide referral letters. > > On Feb 10, 6:11 pm, Anthony Bryan <[email protected]> wrote: >> 2009 soc has been announced. I think we can apply in about a month. >> some nice things came from last year's soc. >> >> we need to come up w/ possible student projects, if we were to get >> accepted. not everyone can edit the wiki cos of spam, so just post >> here. >> >> last year's ideas, most of which are still >> undonehttp://groups.google.com/group/metalink-discussion/web/gsoc08-ideas >> >> I've added metalink to mozilla's list too...hopefully we'll be luckier >> this year! >> >> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Community:SummerOfCode09:Brainstorming >> >> -- >> (( Anthony Bryan ... Metalink [http://www.metalinker.org] >> )) Easier, More Reliable, Self Healing Downloads > > > -- (( Anthony Bryan ... Metalink [ http://www.metalinker.org ] )) Easier, More Reliable, Self Healing Downloads --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Metalink Discussion" group. 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