hey, everyone!! the Google Summer of Code is around the corner, I thought it would be a great idea to share my learnings and insights with you all. I will write a series of posts detailing one issue at a time, I will try to cover all the basic questions and details. Hopefully, this will provide some value and help you decide on your GSoC organization as well.

What is Google Summer of Code? To participate and get some good results out of it. It is important to know all the basics of the program. What is the true meaning of GSoC and why Google is running this program?

Basic - The Google Summer of Code, often abbreviated to GSoC, is an international annual program in which Google awards stipends to contributors who successfully complete a free and open-source software coding project during the summer. The contributors work under different mentors from the project, who guide you throughout your project experience.

I would advise you to go through Google's Offical documentation once.

Points to keep in Mind

1. Start of 2023, Google announced that everyone can participate in the program without the need of being a student. This means that even if you aren’t currently enrolled in an institute, you can still participate even working officials can participate in this program. However, this would also mean that a lot more people will be applying, therefore bringing in a lot more competition.

2. As GSoC Contributors, you won’t be working with Google but with your selected Organization. I will detail more about organizations and organization selection later on.

3. The program’s official timeline starts from March 7. Google will announce all of the organizations and their Project listings after that, and everyone will have time to discuss the project up until April 4-19, when the official Application period begins.

I worked with Processing Foundation on their p5.js project. On this project, I worked on internationalization(i18n) and the Deployment of a new version of p5.js. A new website was created and deployed in this project for more details you can refer to my medium article.

🔴 Multiple Sizes of Projects

There are going to be 2 project different types of projects one is medium-sized projects (~175 hours) and the other is large projects (~350 hours).

You can spread the project out over a longer period of time and you can even switch to a longer time frame mid-program if life happens.

Rather than a mandatory 12-week program that runs from June — August with everyone required to finish their projects by the end of the 12th week, now mentors and their GSoC Contributors can decide together if they want to extend the deadline for the project up to 22 weeks.

🔴 Stipend

• For medium-sized projects: A base amount of 3000 USD and then adjust it based on each country’s PPP value. There is a minimum (1500 USD) and maximum (3300 USD) stipend amount.

For India it’s adjusted to — 1500 USD

• For large-sized projects: We start with a base amount of 6000 USD and then adjust it based on each country’s PPP value. There is a minimum (3000 USD) and maximum (6600 USD) stipend amount.

For India it’s adjusted to — 3000 USD

• The Stipend will be paid in 2 halfs ▪ First Evaluation (paid July 29): 45% ▪ Final Evaluation (paid September 20): 55%

All the payments will be done through Payoneer which will charge a transaction fee that is minimal.

That's about it make sure to read my other posts, as this was just a beginner's post. In the upcoming posts, I will share more details regarding selecting open-source organizations and how to work with them.

#gsoc #opensource #googlesummerofcode #experience #coding