I understand Gervase’s concern about “SoC” not being as successful as it could have been. However, I think the program has actually been a very good thing, and will do even better next year (if they do it again, which seems likely) :

• Mozilla (10 projects started, none still alive, or so it seems) may just have had bad luck.
• SoCers were all students, most of them still are, and they’re probably busy right now with their studies.
• As far as I remember, the program was announced by Google in a bit of a hurry (lots of people heard about the program just a few days, or hours, before the deadline), and so was the list of organizations SoCers could submit a project suggestion to. Hopefully, this will be better managed next year, meaning (probably) more participants, and therefore (even) better SoCers. It was Google’s first shot at this, let’s give them some time to make it (even) better.
• Even if the percentage of SoCers still working on OSS could have been higher (Chris DiBona says about 30%, which is better than they expected), it already makes a big difference: these people have actually enjoyed the experience very much and are likely to stick around for a long time.

Corey’s statement (in which he calls me “excellent”, wow, thanks !! ) that mentors in Ubuntu may not have been as available as necessary (too busy with development) may be true in general (I don’t know), but in my case my mentor (seb128) has been extremely helpful, available pretty much all the time for me (and he still is), and always nice and friendly. Maybe that’s one of the main reasons why I stayed after all Thanks seb128 !

Another topic: my website whylinuxisbetter.net has been updated quite a lot, nice people are translating it and sending good feedback. New ideas, comments and suggestions requested : drop a mail to ideas@whylinuxisbetter.net !

PS: I guess I’m gonna provide this link to my hackergotchi until Jeff has the time to update it