Berkholz: How to recruit open-source contributors

Gentoo's Donnie Berkholz has written a treatise on the methods the distribution uses to turn Google Summer of Code students into regular contributors, claiming an increase from 20% to 65%. "In my view (and therefore Gentoo’s view), the code produced during someone’s initial summer of work tends to serve its best purpose as inculcation to a community and its standards, rather than as useful code in itself. We regard that code as potentially throwaway work that is more of an experimentation than something on Gentoo’s critical path."

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