Jon Stacey Rocked Google Summer of Code!

Jon Stacey has been a stellar student, exactly the person whom everyone hopes to attract with the Google Summer of Code. He spent the first couple of weeks becoming familiar with the project, which was to help develop the Media module for Drupal, then made a strong case to switch the focus of the project to bring the desired features directly into Drupal core.

I initially gave him two weeks to change the focus, and we would reevaluate at the end of that time to see if he should continue in the new direction or return to the less ambitious original goals. During this time, he created four patches that completely overhauled Drupal's file system to implement PHP stream wrappers, and after a consultation with Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg (Alex UA) (Drupal's administrator for the GSOC this year), we decided to continue.

I was initially hesitant, as I suspected none of the new patches would be completed in time for the end of GSOC, let alone for the planned code freeze for Drupal 7 planned in September. However, Jon wrote a convincing argument, including the fact that although Drupal requires a community vet before integrating new code, GSOC only requires the code itself, along with an evaluation of the code.

Jon's work quickly garnered the attention of several core developers, including Andrew Morton (drewish), a file/media heavy who also volunteered to co-mentor, Peter Wolanin (pwolanin) with Acquia, and Justin Randell (justinrandell) & Jody Hamilton (Jody Lynn) with Zivtech. We held a two day code sprint in Philly (a month after an earlier sprint in Denver), and Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, committed the initial patch at the end of that.

I was ecstatic, and would have been satisfied with that alone. If Jon had accomplished nothing else during the GSOC, I would still have happily passed his work. But Jon is one of those rare developers we all aspire to be and love to collaborate with, who brings gusto into his work, or, to paraphrase Mark Twain, turns his vacation into his vocation.

Over the next few weeks, Jon continued working on the patches, consolidating them and conferring with the team that formed around them. The day before the end of GSOC (August 17), the rest of this was committed to Drupal 7, which is well beyond my initial expectations for the project, as prior to Jon's involvement, the concept of stream wrappers in core, after the initial boost by Christian Schmidt (c960657) and Darrel O'Pry (dopry), had languished for over a year in the issue queue.

In all, I am very pleased to have worked with Jon Stacey the past few months. He is a self-motivated student, whose exemplary work stands as a testament to the goals of the Google Summer of Code. I hope he decides to stick with Drupal, as he has already left his mark, and is well on his way to becoming one of its more recognized and respectable core developers.

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