Re: Organization removed from GSoC after proposal submission deadline

[Stephanie Taylor]

Hello Lukasz,

I did some hard work on writing my proposal. Yesterday I realised that I am not selected this year, so I was curious what other projects have been selected by the organization. I couldn't find it on the organizations list anymore nor single student project related to it.
So my first thought was: "Does every single submitted student project has been rejected by the organization?". I wrote an e-mail to mailing list and I get the info that organization has been removed from the program this year due to rules violation - someone was involved

in plagiarism, so all students who applied can't be chosen. I fully understand that plagiarism should be taken very seriously and should be banned, but punishing all students who applied to particular organization and did hard work and theirs proposal is a bit brutal. Peple who normally would be accepted - were not.

There is more to the story that we aren't going to get into but it was clear the organization should not be involved in GSoC 2016 for everyone concerned, including prospective students.

There were a large number of students who applied to the org and even if the org had continued in GSoC 2016 they only had a few slots for students. More than 95% of the students that applied with the org wouldn't have been chosen. While we understand this situation is incredibly frustrating to students and most students want to think the reason they aren't in GSoC 2016 is because the org is no longer a part of the program, the reality is most of the students wouldn't have been accepted into GSoC 2016 even if the org was a part of the program because of the small number of slots the org had versus the number of applications they received.

Does anybody know such sitiations from the past? Is there any way to secure from it in future? How can I be sure that the other organization which I will choose in next year will not be removed after proposal deadline? This is a kind of lottery where you just can get ugly prize. The only way I can think of is submitting proposals to more than 1 organization, but I always wanted to focus on one good proposal instead of writing multiple.

This is a new situation for us and not one we are happy about. Our number one concern is that the organization and mentors provide students a great mentoring experience where the student can grow and learn during GSoC. With the organizational issues going on with the org it was clear that was not going to be possible this year so to keep the integrity of the GSoC program and for the organization to be able to reorganize itself this was the only option available for this year. Unfortunately the timing of this was very bad as it was right before the student announcements went live.

You can still contribute to an open source organization outside of GSoC and learn valuable skills that will help you in your next application or in your future career. We hope you continue to learn more about open source and find a project that interests you. 

Best,

Stephanie

 

Best regards,

Lukasz Dmitrowski