Re: [mupen64plus] Google summer of code?

[Sven Eckelmann]

On Thursday 14 February 2013 10:43:28 James Rowe wrote:
> Something I've been thinking about recently is why shouldn't Mupen64Plus
> try to be in the Google Summer of Code? From what I understand, there are
> no real drawbacks for applying as a mentoring organization. It has two
> requirements to be eligible, one, your project should be something thats
> not "highly niche or has very few users" and it has to be licensed as open
> source (mupen is GPL I think, so that checks out). All it takes is an
> application and some ideas for what some students can do. You just need an
> idea list. I mean, Mupen 64 Plus is probably the best emulator around and
> its also one of the only N64 emulators that is in active development too
> from what I can tell but its still missing a few things to make it more
> usable.

I've already experienced the "fun" of some GSOC events. Single small projects
aren't picked most of the time. So it is usually better to cooperate together
with other similar projects sharing the same view and create a big
organization team with many subprojects. An example is Freifunk

But you should keep in mind: You need mentors who have experience and a lot of
free time (to organize everything, to mentor and to do the extra communication
stuff with google). And it wouldn't be the first time the mentor came to the
conclusion that it would have been easier to just implement the stuff himself
(it would work and wouldn't have cost him soooo much time whichhe now lost in
mentoring). And the worst part: most students don't continue to work after
they got paid. Even when they said "yes, it is soo interesting and after that
time I will continue and finish my project". Only people who worked before
their GSOC task on the project also stayed after the time was over. So, it is
not really unusual to see the student disappear and a mentor reimplementing
everything after GSOC to get the feature mergeable.

Maybe it is only my experience and a result of the topic (kernel hacking with
focus on wifi mesh networks).

> There is so many things that a student can do to help this out too.
> Heres some things that I thought up off the top of my head.
>
> - A separate GUI (I understand that Mupen64Plus is a library and all,
> but theres no reason a student couldn't develop a new GUI for mupen that
> can be a separate project)

Why another GUI. We have for example a GUI for Android smartphones, for OYUA,
for wxwidgets (Windows, Linux, MacOS X), ...? Why not improving them?

> - Controller configurator (most of the questions posted here seem to be
> "My Controller not work Pls fix kthxbye")

See GUI

> - The long awaited netplay feature. (I saw some of the old work on it,
> and personally, if I don't get an internship this summer, I'd love to
> apply to work on that)

This isn't really trivial and not a topic for anyone without any experience in
the current code and without knowledge of previous implementations. At least
not when doing it as part of GSOC. Would not be the first time somebody jumped
up and said he wants to implement it now... and nobody heard anything from him
again. Maybe I am just seeing it too pessimistic because I never tried it
myself and only judge based on my past experience.

But yes, when their is a team of volunteers for the mentoring team and some
interested students...

Kind regards.
Sven

[Richard Goedeken]

Yes, thank you for bringing up this topic on the list. I think it is a good
idea in general and would like to mentor a developer in the future, but right
now I lack the available free time for this.

Regards,
Richard

On 02/19/2013 09:20 AM, James Rowe wrote:
> Well, its all up to that then I suppose :) If there is anyone that would be
> willing to mentor so let it be. Otherwise I don't think it hurt to bring this
> topic up
>
> ~James