[GSoC] GSoC 2014 with OBF and JSBML

[Eric Talevich]

Folks,

Now that the Open Bioinformatics Foundation is serving as a mentoring org
for GSoC 2014, we've had some recent discussions on how auxilliary projects
(i.e. not the Bio* libraries) can participate and how these potential
projects will be handled administratively for GSoC.

JSBML contributed several solid project ideas and we're seeing interest
from potential students already. In our application to Google, OBF treated
JSBML as being affiliated with BioJava, which seemed like a safe way to
ensure students would have access to the OBF infrastructure and other
mentors if needed.  However, JSBML also can provide the necessary
infrastructure, namely an active developer community and a mailing list
where a student can discuss their work with the core developers.

The question: For GSoC 2014, should we keep the connection between BioJava
and JSBML, or would it be better to officially bring the JSBML project
within OBF's scope?

This decides two things, in practice:

1. Should GSoC students accepted to work on JSBML send their weekly updates
to the mailing list for BioJava developers, JSBML developers, or both?

2. On the OBF Ideas page [1], should we list the JSBML ideas in the BioJava
and Cross-Project sections, alongside the contact info for BioJava and OBF,
or in a separate JSBML section, with JSBML's contact info?

For further reading, see the unratified document describing the
relationship between OBF and the various member projects [2] and a recent
thread on this topic [3]. In short, we're flexible, but we'd like to
understand each project's goals in order to ensure everyone's needs are met.


Looking forward to hearing your thoughts,
Eric

[1] http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2014_Ideas
[2]
https://github.com/OBF/obf-docs/blob/unratified-drafts/Affiliated-Project-Policy.md
[3] http://lists.open-bio.org/pipermail/gsoc/2014/000264.html