[Bf-committers] GSoC ideas page

[Tom M]

On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 6:06 AM, Ton Roosendaal <ton at blender.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This page is now growing into a wishlist of cool features. Many of
> these would not fit a student without prior Blender experience. Maybe
> they have to get sorted?
>

Most of them could have been reorganized to 'improve the foo tools' as
was done for the sculpt tools by brecht.

> My take is that:
>
> - A feasible GSoC project is crucial.

Agreed.  Although I think nodifying the logic tools as a whole was the
only project that has a broad enough scope to be outside of
feasibility.

> - We need students with proven competence in the area they want to
> contribute to

That I disagree with.  A coder should be proven competent by dint of
previous coding experience in something.  I'd bet 99% of kernel and
compiler coders could jump in to Blender without difficulty for
instance.  Most of our successful project participants did not have
previous coding experience in the area they wanted to contribute to.

> - The student will work 2 months on a paid job, it doesn't have to be 'fun'.

Agreed, although the odds of getting quality proposals and interest
from outside developers will generally be based on how interesting or
fun the problem is.

Also our odds of keeping the student as an active coder increase if
the project is fun and likely to get community accolades.

> - A student without own ideas what topics to work on is going to be a failure.

Totally disagree.  The student needs to be engaged in the project, and
while 'coming up with ones own idea' can be a motivator for some, 'own
idea' is by no means a likely indicator of success or failure.

LetterRip