I am in.

I originally wanted to bring this up at FOSDEM, but since the applications for the mentoring organizations to GSoC 2017 have already opened [1], I am expediting my question.

<TL;DR> Do you think that the microkernel projects that meet in the Microkernel devroom at FOSDEM every year, could and should try to do the Google Summer of Code 2017 together under the umbrella of the Microkernel devroom? </TL;DR>

To me this makes perfect sense. Let me elaborate. In the past the individual projects had mixed luck with being accepted into GSoC. While the reasons for not accepting a project in any given year may differ from project to project, I think the underlying reason is that there would simply be too many mentoring organizations representing operating system projects in general, and also too many microkernel operating system projects in particular. Instead, I think the trend should be to reduce the number of these mentoring organizations and group the projects under a single umbrella organization. For microkernels this umbrella organization could be the Microkernel devroom.

I have the impression that Google strongly prefers umbrella organizations over small individual projects such as ours. I simply believe we have bigger chance to get in together as an umbrella organization than as individual projects (even though that is, of course, possible too).

Some of you already use an umbrella organization to have basically a guaranteed access to the GSoC, but why not support this idea anyway and have your ideas list linked from two umbrella organizations?

The Microkernel devroom is an already established common entity promoting our common cause. Let us use its auspices also for Google Summer of Code and, in case of success, also the GSoC Mentor Summit.

I am now predominantly interested in general feedback on this idea rather than jumping straight into technicalities of how to divide students and such. So do people like this idea? Should we proceed with it?

[1] https://opensource.googleblog.com/2017/01/now-accepting-organization-applica...

-- Vasily A. Sartakov sartakov@ksyslabs.org

Dear all,

I am now predominantly interested in general feedback on this idea rather than jumping straight into technicalities of how to divide students and such. So do people like this idea? Should we proceed with it?

I definitively support this idea. Actually, I have been discussing it with Jakub for several months already and we originally planned to discuss it with others during FOSDEM. But there is no reason to hesitate now, of course. My two cents: * I think we can host the information pages and also the idea page of the umbrella organization on the microkernel.info website. I believe it is a suitable quasi-neutral location. * We should discuss whether we will encourage or discourage the participating organizations in the umbrella organization to also submit their individual GSoC applications. I personally think that there is nothing wrong with that, but as already said many times, nobody outside Google actually knows what are the Google's criteria for selecting the organizations into GSoC, thus anything could harm our chances in principle. * My original suggestion was to name the umbrella organization after microkernel.info. I acknowledge that naming it after the devroom has its appeal -- it is a more physical, tangible entity. However, I would also like to suggest that the umbrella should not be limited to those organizations that actively participate or have participated in the devroom, but it should be open to any project which could be considered a microkernel OS (by a broad definition). Any objections against that? [On the other hand, I believe that the active devroom participants will form the "hard core" of the umbrella :)] Best regards Martin Decky