On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 08:39:51PM -0500, Aaron Spike wrote:
Bryce Harrington wrote:
I don't think it's likely we'll get more than a few slots, so I think it would be most fair to target them to distinct features.
I've thought it over. I disagree with your assement of "fair." I think it would be less fair to turn away a second strong candidate in favor of a weaker feature.
I think you misunderstand. I wasn't talking about fairness to the students, but rather fairness for developers and users, that would like to maximize the amount of benefit gained by Inkscape.
You're of course right that if we only have 2 slots, and we got 2 extremely great proposals for feature A, and 1 acceptable but average proposal for feature B, then it would be most fair to the students to select both for feature A. However, any users or developers who are looking forward to feature B would be disappointed.
Also, it doesn't necessarily follow that 2 students working on a single feature would get that feature done twice as fast, or would get twice as much done. There will be some ineffeciencies due to stepping on toes, overhead to coordinate plans, etc. etc.
Further, note that the quality of proposal isn't guaranteed to indicate the quality of the work. Someone could be a great coder and a very hard worker, but be inexperienced at writing proposals. Or vice versa.
Bryce