Plan 9 Applying to GSoC 2021

[Anthony Sorace]

Hello! After a few years away, we’ll be applying to Google’s Summer of Code program again this year.

Summer of Code is a program Google runs where they fund students to work with mentors from open source organizations. The primary purpose of the program is to help students work with real-world open source projects, with the hopes of creating long-term contributors to open source software. You can read more about the program on Google’s [GSoC] site.

We have participated in GSoC several years in the past, and get a bit better at it every year. We've had a lot of positive experiences for both students and mentors over the years. Applications (for both organizations and students) are competitive and there is no guarantee we'll get in, but I'm hopeful. We'll again be acting as an "umbrella organization" for Plan 9 and related technologies, so whether you'd like to work with Plan 9, Inferno, plan9ports, or anything else related, we're open to the project.

Applications for organizations just opened, and we’re working on this year’s application now. There are three things we’re asking the community for:

1. Project ideas. One of the key parts of the application is the project ideas page. If you’ve got ideas that seem like they’d be a good fit for the program, and *especially* if you’re up for mentoring them, please think about how to describe them in sufficient detail for a student to work on (objectives, promising starting points, likely challenges, &c).
2. Students. If you are a qualifying student, please consider applying! If you know students, and especially if you’re in an academic setting yourself, please encourage students to apply. If we get in, the number of students we’ll get to work with is determined in part by how many apply to work with us, so if you can get prospective students excited about spending part of their summer on Plan 9, that’s really helpful. Also, GSoC is a very good program for students generally and a wide variety of open source projects participate, so most folks with a technical bent can find something of interest.
3. Mentors. If you’ve been working with Plan 9 or related technologies for a while, would be excited to help new folks get into it, and have time for mentoring a student over the summer, please get in touch.

We’ll have more to say about these, especially where we’re collecting and sharing the project ideas and prospective mentors, in the next few days. For now, start thinking about projects and talking to students.

For those of you familiar with the program from previous years, there have been a few changes. Most notably, starting this year the expectation is no longer that students be working mostly full-time on their GSoC project during the summer. This broadens the pool of applicants significantly, but also changes the size of projects. The expectation this year is that students work on a 175-hour project over the course of 10 weeks. Google has also broadened the types of students who can apply. You can find more information about the changes on Google’s blog post about the [changes].

I'm excited to be applying to this again. If nothing else, it's just fun to get to talk to a bunch of new folks about this all. Look for more info in the next few days.

Your friendly neighborhood org admin,
Anthony


[GSoC]: https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com

[changes]: https://opensource.googleblog.com/2020/10/google-summer-of-code-2021-is-bringing.html

[stats]: https://opensource.googleblog.com/2020/08/google-summer-of-code-2020-statistics.html