On Mon, 3 Mar 2008, Alessandro Vesely wrote:

> Since SMTP is a protocol, one obvious thing I can think of is to add SMTP to
> curl, so that one can send mail using curl, much like one can do with, say,
> msmtp. I guess that should be discussed in curl-library.

Yes, stuff that would change and improve libcurl is better suited to be
discussed in curl-library.

> Less obvious projects may exist. For example, using web services to
> coordinate the activity of a backup MX server (or other forwarder) and the
> primary MTA. That is, fix SMTP forwarding with a program or script that
> *uses* curl. Thus, that might be discussed in curl-users.

[...]

> The second example above would not bring any good or bad to curl. Does that
> disqualify it as a project presentable under cURL's mentorship?

I hadn't actually considered projects that can be made to simply use
(lib)curl... I think I would generally seem them as not really connected to
this project and thus not suitable to get "hosted" by us. But then I figure
this is a gray area where someone can come up with a very cool idea that would
be using curl closely and that would make a really cool thing and then I may
have to change my mind...

> I guess students are to be caught on these mailing lists.

It seems a lot of gsoc students are new to open source and development this
style with all the openess, the mails, the communication etc so a large part
of the mentoring of students is to gently push the students and help them
"get" the open source life.

> Those who go to google.com will be presented with a huge list of mentoring
> organizations and I don't understand how should a student pick up a
> criterion for choosing one among them...

I don't know either, but I was the primary coordinator for Rockbox last year
and I noticed that even though there were something like a hundred
organizations participating then and all of them listing 10-20 (at least)
interesting projects, students seem to find their way around and Rockbox got
something like 10+ applications (which ended up being 4 in the actual
program).

> What qualifications are required to apply as a mentor?

You should be familiar with (lib)curl, development model, funtionality and at
least basic understanding of the source code. And of course have that google
account (I stress this fact since some people are against registering at
Google and you really can't be part of this if you feel that way). You should
also be prepared to spend time on a weekly basis to actually mentor "your"
student, to help him/her reach the goals of the project.

Mentors sign up and volunteer as mentors first, and then when students apply
for doign specific projects we get to assign mentor on a student per student
basis so that we can make the best possible match, depending on what the
mentors can and want and what the students plan to do.

For a lot more generic gsoc info:

         http://code.google.com/soc/2008/faqs.html

-- 
  Commercial curl and libcurl Technical Support: http://haxx.se/curl.html