Getting hg into GSoC 2013

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

Hey. I'm Jordi. I'm not very active in this mailing list or in hg
development, but you may know me by my IRC handle, "JordiGH". I am
writing because I want Mercurial to participate in Google Summer of
Code 2013:

    http://google-opensource.blogspot.ca/2013/02/flip-bits-not-burgers-google-summer-of.html

When I was at the 2011 GSoC mentor summit, there were all these guys
wearing git shirts, which made me think, "where are my hg compadres?"
We're under-represented.

So! I am hereby volunteering to be Mercurial's org admin for GSoC
2013. I will handle the paperwork with Google and coordination of
mentors. I need,. howoever, a backup admin. If I do my job correctly,
the backup admin is just a figurehead and does nothing, but if I get
hit by a bus or equivalent, Google will instead contact the backup
admin for GSoC coordination. Can anyone volunteer to be a backup
admin?

In order to get into GSoC, we need a few things. First, we need an
application. I couldn't find a public application for Mercurial, but
here is the one I collaboratively wrote for Octave this year:

    http://wiki.octave.org/GSoC_2013_application

The actual questions may vary a little for this application, but over
the years they have maintained fairly stable. I will be putting such
an application in the Mercurial wiki soon for GSoC 2013.

Next, we need an ideas page and something for guidance for the
students. We already have some of those:

     http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/SummerOfCode
     http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/SummerOfCode/Ideas2011
     http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/SummerOfCode/Ideas2010

I will be working on these for 2013. Matthew Turk has offered to help.
Anyone else, please help too!

Also, we need willing mentors. Mentoring is a commitment of about 10
hours per week. There is a small monetary incentive for mentoring, 500
USD by November, but in the past this money has been given to SFC.
What Google wants to see, however, is a healthy community that is
welcoming to neophytes. It helps if the ideas page lists specific
mentors and how to contact them.

As a final point, I want to address the question of Mercurial applying
as an independent GSoC mentoring org or under the PSF umbrella. I
think we should make an honest effort to go independent, as this will
almost certainly give us more student slots, and from what I can tell,
the Mercurial community is vibrant enough to mentor people. If the
independent application fails, the above work will not go wasted, as
the PSF can almost certainly give us a few student slots.

Let's do this!
- Jordi G. H.