[FFmpeg-soc] Summer Orientation And Expectations

[Mike Melanson]

Hello students,

Welcome to the FFmpeg's 2008 edition of the Summer of Code. You 9 lucky
students have been selected out of dozens of applications to work on new
components and subsystems for the leading open source multimedia backend
library. This is your orientation email.

Let's be blunt about the nature of Summer of Code: Google gives money to
students in exchange for students contributing code to open source
projects. As many of you know, FFmpeg still has a number of projects
from previous years that never made it all the way into the production
codebase. In most cases, the students still received all of their
compensation.

This is going to change this year and we wanted to make you all aware of
the change up front so there are no surprises. Basically, it works like
this:

No code in production SVN = no cash

To break it down further, the key payout dates are:

* May 26 (initial payment, $500)
* July 14 (mid-term payment, $2000)
* September 1 (final payment, $2000)

Technically, the program begins on May 26. However, there is no rule
against starting early (like, *right now*), as some students have
already done. But as long as we are certain that you are active and
engaged, then by May 26, you will see your initial payment.

By July 14, we want to see some code in source control. The way this
will work is that you will each receive your own private source control
sandbox where you can do whatever, and each commit will be emailed to
this list for review. The source control will probably be SVN but might
be git. We will not, however, be impressed if we see a major code dump
in the first week of July (mentors' mid-term evaluations are due on July
7). If we don't think you are making appropriate progress by the
mid-term, we will drop you.

For the final deadline, same thing, only harsher. We want the code to be
migrated into production SVN (passing the Niedermayer test every step of
the way, and you KNOW how that is).

Specific goals will be outlined in a followup email.

If you have any serious concerns about these policies, please speak up.
Otherwise, I suggest you start coding. :)

-- 
	-Mike Melanson