Introduction⌗

Hey there!! Welcome to my first blog. Here we will be talking about my journey to Google Summer Of Code.

I’ll be discussing the four major questions, which new developers/students have.

  • What
  • How
  • When
  • Why

Without further adieu, lets start.

What is GSOC?⌗

Here’s a brief intro from the official website of GSOC.

Google Summer of Code is a global, online program focused on bringing new contributors into open source software development. GSoC Contributors work with an open source organization on a 12+ week programming project under the guidance of mentors

Google Summer of Code (GSOC) is a renowned international program hosted by Google each year. It promotes young minds to actively engage in open source projects, encouraging their contributions while offering a stipend to support their work. If you’re not familiar with the term open source projects and software, follow here.

It does not matter if you are new to open source, this is why the program exists, to educate people about open source, and encourage them to contribute more.

If you want to follow more about GSOC, you can check out their official website here

How to start with GSOC?⌗

This is the most vital question which arises in everyone’s mind before they start with this. How to start with GSOC. And there’s no definite answer to this. Everyone has their answer.

My Journey⌗

Ok, so I heard about GSOC from my friends in college. Three of my friends got into GSOC in previous years, and everyone had their own stories to tell. The point everyone had to say was “Start contributing early, to get the idea about the project.”

So when the year 2023 kicked off, I decided to give this thing a try. I started searching for the organizations around mid-January 2023 and switched from one to another until I came across Wikimedia Foundation. A funny thing happened here, the project I wanted to contribute to, was not setting up on my local machine (it had some issues with one of my Chrome extensions). More about this on my blogs.

Anyways so my actual contribution to the project started around February. I started with good-first issues, listed on the task board. I joined the public communication channels of the organization to keep in contact with the project mentors and communicate with other contributors as well. This helps if you encounter any errors, because there’s a high chance someone also has encountered this before, so they can help you out on this, or they’ll post about it, and you can follow the solution.

Tips for new-comers⌗

The most frequent doubt which everyone asks is “How to select the organization”. Choosing the organization can be a task in itself. Selecting the project which aligns with the tech stack you are comfortable with, takes time and patience. For choosing the right org, you have to do some research, like

  • Check out the previous years org list, if the organization appeared for the previous year GSOC, there’s a high chance that it will appear this year again.

  • Search the organizations, filtered by the tech stack you are comfortable with.

Once you have chosen the right organization, here are some tips to move forward:

  • Check out their projects. Connect with them using their public communication channels like Slack,Zulip,Discord .etc

  • Connect with the org admins/mentors, gain info on what projects will be appearing for this year GSOC.

  • If the org, in which you were contributing, does not get selected for this year GSOC. Don’t lose hope. Just lookout for some other orgs with similar tech stack. Many contributors, who got selected, started late. And Hey!!, you just contributed to the open source community, Congratulations!!.

  • Start with some good-first-issues, these will be labelled as such on their task management board. If not, you can ask the mentor/org admin to assign you some new-comer friendly issues to start working on.

  • Make a decent proposal. Ok here’s the thing, The organization never takes voice/video interviews to select candidature for GSOC. The only way it selects contributors is by judging them based on the proposal they have submitted. So try to make a decent, verbose proposal stating how are you planning work on the tool/project once you get selected, what changes are you going to make .etc

  • Once you are done with your proposal, make sure to get it reviewed by your mentor/org admin. And don’t send them a day or two before the submission date, make sure they have enough time to review your proposal. This step helps, as you get direct feedback from the mentor/org admin, of what they want in the project, or if something does not feels right on your proposal. You can check out my proposal if you want.

  • Submit the proposal before the deadline, with correct details like project size.etc For this you can ask your mentor/org admin, or it should be specified under the GSOC task/issue.

Now that you’ve submitted your proposal. Stay calm, patient as the result usually comes out in a month. You can still contribute after submitting your proposal, there’s no one’s stopping you from contributing. Hey its open source contributions, please.

If you prefer video explanations over text, follow here.

When GSOC?⌗

GSOC usually starts in the summer, as in the name Summer Of Code. And one can start contributing to the organization anytime before submitting a proposal. I’ve seen people starting a month before the deadline, and people who have been contributing more than a year. This all depends on the person.

As for when is the ideal time to GSOC. I would say anytime. Its not compulsory to do this on your freshmen year, or sophomore year .etc. Anyone can appear Anytime. You can be a freshmen student, you can be a final year student, you can be a working professional. Although there’s an age limit of 18+, so make sure you pass that :)

For more such queries, you can visit their FAQ page here, and the offical rule book for GSOC here

Why GSOC?⌗

Because why not?

For me, As I have heard stories (GSOC journeys) of my friends, I wanted to give this a go, as soon as possible, and basically not to spend my summers looking out of the window. I wanted to do something productive this time, and also you get paid for doing something you like, so :p

It depends on person to person, some loves contributing to open source (which you fall for eventually after some time), some do it for the stipend, some do it for a push in their career growth .etc

Thats about it⌗

Anyways, if you are planning for next year’s GSOC, I hope this blog helped you. If not, you can check out other blogs as well :(

Wish you all the luck. Waiting to read your Whys..Whens..Hows.. and Whats.. about your GSOC journey.

Also if you are new here, you can check out the rest of the blogs here. This is my first blog. More bi-weekly blogs coming soon. See you then :)