Mentor applications validation

At the ASF we had a potentially embarrassing problem this year. This could
have been avoided by having some form of validation against mentor
applications that would ensure the applicant is actually from the ASF.

Normally we use email addresses to verify peoples ASF committership. Only
ASF committers get a @apache.org email address, so it is a quick look up on
internal databases to ensure someone is genuinely an ASF committer.
However, the google webapp requires the use of a google account, hence we
do not know the @apache.org email address.

We had a number of people apply for mentorship who were not ASF members. We
even accepted one of them, who then went on to rank and mentor a student.

You must understand, the ASF has a large committer base, it is not possible
for myself and the other admin to know everyone by name, and certainly not
by gmail account.

Fortunately, the person involved intended no malice and when the situation
came to light a committer stepped forward to be mentor (the proposal was
one they had approved anyway). So in this instance, no harm was done.

In different circumstances this could have been very damaging, not to
mention embarrassing for GSoC and the ASF.

I therefore propose an enhancement to the webapp next year that requires
the addition of some form of information along with the click box to apply
for mentorship with an organisation. A simple text field will suffice since
individual organisations can define how such a text field would be used.
For example, in our case we would request the apache.org email address.
Others may use a password known only to genuine committers etc.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by ross.gardler on 13 Apr 2007 at 12:54

denniskorir / google-summer-of-code

Mentor applications validation #101