Important: A note on plagiarism

[Sean Lip]

Hi all,

In case you haven't seen it, I just wanted to bring to your attention some notes on how we define and deal with plagiarism. This is important since we ask that proposals be openly shared.

Firstly, I would like to remind all applicants that proposals must be original (see section 2.4 of the Contributor Participation Agreement). In particular, we will assume that, by submitting your proposal, you are claiming that all parts of your proposal are your own work, unless you specifically indicate otherwise. Therefore, if any part of your proposal is copied/adapted from the Internet or other sources, you should make it clear that you are doing so, and provide a link or reference back to the source, with appropriate credit. (In cases of doubt, we would encourage you to err on the side of giving credit, for the reason given in the next paragraph.) If you want to ensure that you aren't accidentally copying someone else's work, it might also make sense to not look at others' proposals for the project that you plan to work on.

Please also note that, per the guidance on our wiki page, proposals that are found to have passed off others' work as their own will automatically be disqualified, and will not move on to further review stages. (Such cases may also be reported to the GSoC admins.) We will enforce these rules strictly, and have disqualified applicants for plagiarism in the past.

You are, of course, still welcome to comment on and help improve other proposals as you see fit. We encourage pro-social behaviour like this that stays true to the community spirit of open source, and that helps the community and project as a whole.

I hope this is useful as a reminder. If you have any questions about the above, or concerns about a particular case of plagiarism, please feel free to send a private note to the org admins and we would be happy to advise on what to do.

Best wishes,

Sean (for the org admins)