[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] SOCIS 2012

Stefano Sabatini stefasab at gmail.com
Tue Jul 10 23:19:15 CEST 2012


On date Sunday 2012-07-08 17:46:36 -0600, Michael Bradshaw encoded:
> *Disclaimer*: There are a few differences in punctuation and grammar
> rules between British and American English (particularly between ','
> and ';'). Seeing as SOCIS is for the European Space Agency, I'm not
> 100% sure if British or American rules will be followed in this. I'm
> going to comment assuming American rules.
[...]
> >* Disappearing student (mandatory): What is your plan for dealing with
> >  a disappearing student?
> >
> >We will try to keep scheduled contact with students during
> >qualification tasks to make sure they are reliable before they are
> >accepted. Also we'll make sure that we have different ways to reach
> >out each student.  We'll also urge the student to provide periodical
> 
> I'm not sure exactly what was meant by "reach out each student." Was
> it "reach out to each student" or "reach each student?"

Changed to "get in contact with him/her...".

> >reports in order to track their progress.
> >
> >In case of a disappearing student, we'll try to get in communication
> 
> "get in communication" sounds funny (it's more idiomatic to say "get
> in touch"). I'd say "get in touch" or "communicate" or something.

Yes, changed to "get in touch".

[...]
> Side note: I don't know what space agencies use when archiving
> multimedia (or how much of their multimedia is archived vs how much
> raw data is archived), but it may be worth mentioning at some point
> possibly?

Added note in the space relevance section:

|By participating in SOCIS, FFmpeg may extend its capabilities and
|focus even more on robustness/reliability features, making it the ideal
|candidate for multimedia/communication tasks related to
|mission-critical space missions, and for archiving multimedia content
|gathered during such missions.

> Thanks for putting this together!

Thanks for the review!
-- 
FFmpeg = Fostering and Free Marvellous Powered Ecletic Guide
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* Project description (mandatory) - Describe in a few word your
  open-source project, why you would like to participate to SOCIS and
  what you hope to gain by participating.

FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert
and stream audio and video. It includes libavcodec - a leading
audio/video codec library.

FFmpeg is one of the most ubiquitous multimedia frameworks in the FLOSS
world, is used as the multimedia engine for a significant part of
multimedia applications, and provides the back-end of possibly most
Internet-based multimedia transcoding services.

FFmpeg strives at being the *universal* multimedia tool, implementing
all possible multimedia formats (even the most obscure fringe formats),
and at being *complete*, providing full fledged support for all
multimedia operations, relying on external projects when it makes
sense.

* Space relevance (mandatory): Describe your project's connection with
  space activities.

Communication is a key aspect in space programs; being able to
communicate effectively and reliably, even in extreme conditions, is a
fundamental prerequisite for mission critical tasks.

FFmpeg is highly focused on providing the most reliable and robust
multimedia support possible, and a special emphasis is given on
optimization issues, making it especially suited for computing
environments with strict memory and power requirements.

By participating in SOCIS, FFmpeg may extend its capabilities and
focus even more on robustness/reliability features, making it the ideal
candidate for multimedia/communication tasks related to
mission-critical space missions, and for archiving multimedia content
gathered during such missions.

In addition to this, the use of multimedia to demonstrate the work of
ESA and other space organizations to the public is also of increasing
importance. Free tools like FFmpeg allow space organizations to create
multimedia at a low cost and distribute content on a wide range of
platforms.

Improving FFmpeg also means improving the large panel of applications
using it, and the overall FLOSS multimedia ecosystem.

* SOCIS ideas page (mandatory): Address of the webpage describing your
  project's development ideas for the SOCIS program

http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=FFmpeg_Summer_Of_Code_In_Space_2012

* Criteria for selecting mentors (mandatory): Describe here how your
  organization is planning to select and recruit the mentors for the
  various projects proposed.

Mentors will be selected on the base of availability and
qualification. Mentors propose themselves based on their expertise in
the domain area for the mentored tasks and on their skill to deal
with students/people.

Mentors are usually veteran developers who delivered significant
contributions to the project and who deeply know the community and the
project itself. On the other hand there is no need for the
self-elected mentor to be a member of the FFmpeg community, provided
that he/she can prove sufficient technical knowledge for the task that
he/she wishes to mentor.

* Disappearing mentor (mandatory): What is your plan for dealing with
  a disappearing mentor?

We'll try to assign a backup mentor to each task. The SOCIS admin
will take the responsibility to act as backup mentor in case the
appointed mentor will disappear during the project.

Finally, we rely on the developers community to help the student to
accomplish the given task, in addition to the help provided by the
appointed mentor.

Since students will be urged to join irc, they will likely get help
from other developers, even if the mentor is not available.

We will also assign a designated backup administrator, which will act as
administrator in case the primary administrator will disappear or will
be unable to follow the project for whatever reasons.

* Disappearing student (mandatory): What is your plan for dealing with
  a disappearing student?

We will try to keep scheduled contact with students during
qualification tasks to make sure they are reliable before they are
accepted. Also we'll make sure that we have different ways to get in
contact with each student.  We'll also urge the student to provide
periodical reports in order to track their progress.

In case of a disappearing student, we'll try to get in touch with
him/her using all the possible channels at our disposal, and in case
the student can't be reached within a reasonable amount of time, we'll
declare his/her task failed.

* Interaction with students during and after the program (mandatory)

We'll recommend students to idle on IRC and we'll request them to read
and possibly participate in discussions on the main development
mailing-list. On the other hand we'll let the students choose the
communication means which better suit them (email, chat, direct voice
call or whatever, public or private communication as agreed with the
mentor).

We will also try to create a friendly environment where the students
can freely participate and where they can find support from the
community. In order to avoid misunderstandings and miscommunication
with the overall community we'll rely on personal communication between
student and mentor in order to make the student aware of the "culture"
and of the community implicit rules.

We hope the students will stay around after the task termination on
the ground that they will feel comfortable with the project and will
have genuine interest in continuing their effort with it.


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