full and half projects

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 08:13:53AM -0700, Karsten Wade wrote:
> Swiping an idea from Ruby SOC, what do you all think about having 1/2
> projects that are smaller in scope, designed to run in 1/2 the time of
> a full project, and have 1/2 of the stipend?
> 
> == full project ==
> 
> * ~10 weeks
> * Full scope
> * $5000
> 
> == half project ==
> 
> * ~5 weeks
> * Smaller scope
> * $2500
> 
One word of warning here -- even if the student has gotten acquainted with
the project before the start of the five weeks, there's still some amount of
time that they spend getting a feel for stuff.  For instance, they may know
who they're supposed to talk to and what the source code looks like but they
may still not know how best to submit code for review.  This kind of stuff
will be fairly constant whether it's a full or half project so,
proportionally, you have less time spent coding in the half project.

Another thought around this -- have we considered a formalized bounty system
for small tasks?  I think it takes quite a bit more work to organize since
these need to have clearly defined deliverables, be a small enough chunk
that you're never left wondering if the bounty is being fulfilled by the
person who took it, and have enough of them that the students looking at
them have adequate choice to choose from.  But they seem to me to be
a better method of organizing small tasks since they're very much about
providing a deliverable rather than working on a feature specification where
there's a question of whether partial work still deserves to be paid for.

I think the google highly open participation contest took this form:
  http://code.google.com/opensource/ghop/2007-8/

-Toshio
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