At its meeting yesterday, the XMPP Council decided not to participate in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) for 2009. There are several reasons for this decision:
- Many of the longtime open-source projects in the XMPP community are quite mature but lacking in obvious mentors or even an open architecture of participation. On the other hand, there are many vibrant new projects in the community but they are not quite mature enough yet to provide a stable environment for student contributors. Together these two factors mean that we would not be able to provide a suitably nurturing environment for introducing GSoC students to the ways of open source software development, which is the primary goal of the program.
- Although the XMPP community has benefited from its participation in GSoC 2005-2008, it might be fair to let other open-source communities have a chance to take part rather than hogging resources during a year when we think we wouldn’t be able to take full advantage of the program.
- GSoC is very rewarding but it is a lot of work for the mentors and the organization admin (c’est moi), and the Council members felt it would be inefficient to spend a great deal of time and energy on the program this year given the considerations cited above.
That said, we hope to have the chance to participate again in 2010 so that we can continue on the path to world domination for XMPP technologies.
–Peter Saint-Andre
