Comments please: Ports 2.0 SoC application to Google

[Tobias Roth]

Aryeh M. Friedman wrote:

>   Kip Macy <kip.macy at gmail.com> has agreed to be the mentor for the
> project if accepted as a SoC project provided that no other suitable
> mentor can be found.   For detailed development schedule see the
> "Detailed Description" portion of the this application.   I have used
> FreeBSD since 1995 and before returning to school worked as a research
> scientist and director of R&D for a very early pioneer of streaming
> media which was a 100% FreeBSD shop and required substantial
> modifications to the network stack and file subsytems of the kernel
> (most of which have been since incorporated into the mainstream TCP/IP
> stack/kernel and/or made unnecessary by them).   See resume for more
> detail.

So, who will be the mentor? You or Kip?


>   Key Milestones and deadlines:
>
>       Milestone                Deadline
>       ------------------------------------------------
>       Complete the build skeleton        Week 1
>
>       Complete the graph library        Week 3
>
>       Dependency scanning            Week 5
>
>       Demonstration of dry run over xorg and    Week 6
>        items from feature 6
>
>       Demonstration of building an         Week 7
>       non-cyclical ports graph
>
>       Alpha test of xorg build        Week 9
>
>       Beta test of xorg build            Week 11
>
>       Complete API and theoretical         Week 12
>       documentation

These seem very vague on first glance. Milestones have to have a
measurable level of completeness, i.e. if you as an implementor or
contractor claim the milestone is done, I as a project manager have to
be able to verify it really is. Things like "Dependency scanning" don't
qualify.

More examples:

Instead of "Complete the graph library", list the necessary features of
that library. Or, instead of "Alpha test of xorg build", describe tests
that have to pass, and make sure what the difference between "Alpha and
Beta" is in that case.


I admit I haven't read through all of the Wiki entry, so maybe that
information is there to be found. But don't expect a person at Google
with hundreds of applications in front of him or her to go and collect
data from various websites. This stuff has to be in the proposal, and it
has to be detailed.

As it is now, I would never accept this task as a contractor, because
it's not clear what exactly the outcome has to look like in order for me
to get my money. I expect it's the same for SoC students and people at
Google approving applications.

Also, this doesn't look like it's even remotely possible to finish this
in two months, but that's just an uneducated guess from my side.

Regards,
Tobias