Microkernel devrom as an umbrella organization in GSoC 2017

[Jakub Jermář]

Hi,

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-applications.html

Kind regards,
Jakub