Google Summer of Code (GSoC) will be celebrating its 20th anniversary with our upcoming 2024 program. Over the past 19 years we have welcomed over 19,000 new contributors to open source through the program under the guidance of 19,000+ mentors from over 800 open source organizations in a wide range of fields.

We are honored and thrilled to keep GSoC’s mission of bringing new contributors into open source communities alive for 20 years. Open source communities thrive when they have new contributors with fresh, exciting ideas and the renewed energy they bring to these communities. Mentorship is a vital way to keep these new contributors coming into the open source ecosystem where they can see collaboration at its finest from their community members all across the world, all with different backgrounds and skills working towards a common goal.

With just over a week left in the 2023 program, we have had one of our most enthusiastic groups of GSoC contributors with 841 GSoC contributors completing their projects with 159 open source organizations. There are 68 GSoC contributors wrapping up their projects. A GSoC 2023 wrap up blog post will be coming late this month with stats and quotes from our contributors and mentors.

Our contributors and mentors have given us invaluable feedback and we are making one adjustment around project time commitment/project scope. For the 2024 program, there will be three options for project scope: medium at ~175 hours, large at ~350 hours and a new size: small at ~90 hours. The idea is to remove the barrier of available time that many potential contributors have and open the program to people who want to learn about open source development but can’t dedicate all or even half of their summer to the program.

As a reminder, GSoC 2024 is open to students and to beginners in open source software development that are over the age of 18 at time of registration.

Interested in applying to the Google Summer of Code Program?

Open Source Organizations

Check out our website to learn what it means to be a participating mentor organization. Watch the GSoC Org Highlight videos and get inspired about projects that contributors have worked on in the past.

Take a look through our mentor guide to learn about what it means to be part of Google Summer of Code, how to prepare your community, gather excited mentors, create achievable project ideas, and tips for applying. We welcome all types of open source organizations and encourage you to apply—it is especially exciting for us to welcome new orgs into the program and we hope you are inspired to get involved with our growing community. In 2024, we look forward to accepting more artificial intelligence/machine learning open source organizations.

Want to be a GSoC Contributor?

New to open source development or a student? Eager to gain experience on real-world software development projects used by thousands of people? It is never too early to start thinking about what kind of open source organization you’d like to learn more about and how the application process works!

Watch our ‘Introduction to GSoC’ video to see a quick overview of the program. Read through our contributor guide for important tips from past participants on preparing your proposal, what to think about if you wish to apply for the program, and explore our website for other resources. Continue to check for more information about the 2024 program once the 2023 program ends later this month.

Please share information about the 2024 GSoC program with your friends, family, colleagues, and anyone you think may be interested in joining our community. We are excited to welcome new contributors and mentoring organizations to celebrate the 20th year of Google Summer of Code!

By Stephanie Taylor – Program Manager, Google Open Source Programs Office

In 2023, Google Summer of Code brought 966 new contributors into open source software development to work with open source organizations on a 12+ week project. We had 168 participating open source organizations with mentors and contributors from over 75 countries this year.

For 19 years, Google Summer of Code has thrived due to the enthusiasm of our open source communities and the 19k+ volunteer mentors that spend from 50-150 hours mentoring each of our 20k contributors since 2005! This year, there are 168 mentoring organizations and over 1,950 mentors participating in the 2023 program. A sincere thank you to our mentors and organization administrators for guiding and supporting our contributors this year. We are also looking forward to hosting many of the 2023 GSoC Mentors on campus this fall for the annual Mentor Summit.

September 4th concluded the standard 12-week project timeline and we are pleased to announce that 628 contributors have successfully completed this year’s program as of today, September 5th, 2023. Congratulations to all the contributors and mentors that have wrapped up their summer coding projects!

2023 has shown us that GSoC continues to grow in popularity with students and developers 19 years after the program began. GSoC had a record high 5,679 contributor applicants from 106 countries submit their project proposals this year. We also had huge interest in the program with over 43,765 registrants from 160 countries applying to the program during the two week application period.

The final step of every GSoC program is to hear back from mentors and contributors on their experiences through evaluations. This helps GSoC Admins continuously improve the program and gives us a chance to see the impact the program has on so many individuals! Some notable results and comments from the standard 12-week project length evaluations are below:

• 95.63% of contributors think that GSoC helped their programming skills
• 99.06% of contributors would recommend their GSoC mentors
• 97.81% of contributors will continue working with their GSoC organization
• 99.84% of contributors plan to continue working on open source
• 82.81% of contributors said they would consider being a mentor
• 96.25% of contributors said they would apply to GSoC again

Here’s some of what our GSoC 2023 Contributors had to say about the program!

We are pleased to announce the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) Contributors for 2023. Over the last few weeks, our 171 mentoring organizations have read through applications, had discussions with applicants, and made the difficult decision of selecting the GSoC Contributors they will be mentoring this summer.

• 43,765 applicants from 160 countries
• 7,723 proposals submitted
• 967 GSoC contributors accepted from 65 countries
• Over 2,400 mentors and organization administrators

Over the next few weeks, our GSoC 2023 Contributors will be actively engaging with their new open source community and getting acclimated with their organization. Mentors will guide the GSoC Contributors through the documentation and processes used by the community, as well as help with planning their milestones and projects for the summer. This Community Bonding period helps familiarize the GSoC Contributors with the languages and tools they will need to successfully complete their projects. Coding begins May 29th and most folks will wrap up September 5th, however, for the second year in a row, GSoC Contributors can request a longer coding period and wrap up their projects by mid-November instead.

We’d like to express our appreciation to the thousands of applicants who took the time to reach out to our mentoring organizations and submit proposals. Through the experience of asking questions, researching, and writing your proposals we hope you all learned more about open source and maybe even found a community you want to contribute to outside of Google Summer of Code! We always say that communication is key, and staying connected with the community or reaching out to other organizations is a great way to set the stage for future opportunities. Open source communities are always looking for new and eager collaborators to bring fresh ideas to the table. We hope you connect with an open source community or even start your own open source project!

There are a handful of program changes to this 19th year of GSoC and we are excited to see how our GSoC Contributors and mentoring organizations take advantage of these adjustments. A big thank you to all of our mentors and organization administrators who make this program so special.

GSoC Contributors—have fun this summer and keep learning! Your mentors and community members have dozens, and in some cases hundreds, of years of combined experience. Let them share their knowledge with you and help you become awesome open source contributors!

By Perry Burnham, Associate Program Manager for the Google Open Source Programs Office

Contributor applications for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2023 are now open! Students and open source beginners 18 years and older are welcome to apply during the registration period, which opened March 20th at 18:00 UTC and closes April 4th at 18:00 UTC.

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. GSoC’s mission is centered around bringing new contributors into open source communities through mentorship and collaboration.

2023 will be the 19th consecutive year hosting Google Summer of Code. We are keeping the big changes we made leading into the 2022 program, with one adjustment around eligibility described below:

• Increased flexibility in project lengths (10-22 weeks, not a set 12 weeks for everyone).
• Choice of project time commitment (medium at ~175 hours or large at ~350 hours)
• For 2023, we are expanding the program to be open to students and beginners in open source software development.

We invite students and beginners in open source to check out Google Summer of Code. Now that applications are open, please keep a few helpful tips in mind:

• Read the program rules, FAQ, contributor guide, and advice for applying.
• Watch our new Intro to GSoC video, as well as the GSoC Org Highlight videos and Community Talks series, to get inspired about projects that contributors have worked on in the past.
• Review the list of 172 mentoring organizations and use filters to sort by programming language (python, C++, etc.) and by category (data, development tools, infrastructure and cloud, security, etc.).
• Narrow down your list to 2-4 organizations and review their ideas list.
• Reach out to the organizations via their contact methods listed on the GSoC site.
• Engage with your organization early and often.

Interested contributors may register and submit project proposals on the GSoC site from now until Tuesday, April 4th at 18:00 UTC.

Best of luck to all our applicants!

By Stephanie Taylor, Program Manager, and Perry Burnham, Associate Program Manager for the Google Open Source Programs Office

We are excited to announce that open source projects and organizations can now apply to participate as mentor organizations in the 2023 Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program. Applications for organizations will close on February 7, 2023 at 18:00 UTC.

As 2023 begins, so does our 19th year of Google Summer of Code! Last year, we had a few updates to the program that will continue for the 2023 program year. Our most noted change coming in 2023 is that we are expanding the program to be open to students and to beginners in open source software development. We are also continuing our increased flexibility in the length of the projects—offering 175 and 350-hour projects—and the ability to extend the program from the standard 12 weeks up to 22 weeks.

Does your open source project want to learn more about becoming a mentor organization? Visit the program site and read the mentor guide to learn what it means to be a mentor organization and how to prepare your community (hint: have plenty of excited, dedicated mentors and well thought out project ideas!).

We welcome all types of organizations and are very eager to involve first-timers with a 2023 goal of welcoming 30+ new orgs into GSoC. We encourage new organizations to get a referral from experienced organizations that think they would be a good fit to participate in GSoC.

The open source projects that participate in GSoC as mentor organizations do all kinds of interesting work in security, cloud, development tools, science, medicine, data, media, and more! Projects can range from being relatively new (about 2 years old) to well established projects that started over 20 years ago. We welcome open source projects big, small, and everything in between.

One thing to remember is that open source projects wishing to apply need to have a solid community; the goal of GSoC is to bring new contributors into established and welcoming communities. While you don’t have to have 50+ community members, the project also can’t have as few as three people.

You can apply to be a mentor organization for GSoC starting today on the program site. The deadline to apply is February 7, 2023 at 18:00 UTC. We will publicly announce the organizations chosen for GSoC 2023 on February 22nd.

Please visit the program site for more information on how to apply and review the detailed timeline for important deadlines. We also encourage you to check out the Mentor Guide, our new ‘Intro to Google Summer of Code’ video, and our short video on why open source projects are excited to be a part of the GSoC program.

Good luck to all open source mentor organization applicants!

By Stephanie Taylor, Program Manager – Google Open Source Programs Office

We just wrapped up the final projects for Google Summer of Code 2022 and want to share some highlights from this year’s program. We are pleased to announce that a total of 1,054 GSoC contributors successfully completed the 2022 cycle.

2022 saw some considerable changes to the Google Summer of Code program. Let’s start with some stats around those three major changes:

• The standard 12-week project length was used by 71.2% of contributors while 19.21% spent between 13–18 weeks on their project, while 9.33% of GSoC contributors took advantage of the 19–22 week project lengths. It is clear from feedback written by mentors and contributors alike the option for extended project lengths was a hit with participants.
• GSoC 2022 allowed both medium-size (~175 hours) and large-size (~350 hours) projects. For 2022, 47% of the contributor projects were medium while 53% were large projects.
• This year the program was also open to more than students for the first time and 10.4% of the accepted GSoC contributors were non-students.

In the final weeks of the program we asked contributors and mentors questions about their experiences with the program this year. Here are some of the key takeaways from the participants:

Favorite part of GSoC 2022

There were a few themes that rose to the top when contributors were asked what their favorite part of the program was:

1. Getting involved in their organization’s open source community with folks from all around the world and their amazing mentors.
2. Learning new skills (programming languages, skills, new technologies) and learning more about open source communities.
3. Contributing to a meaningful community and project.
4. Learning from experienced and thoughtful developers (their mentors and their whole community).

Improved programming skills

96% of contributors think that GSoC helped their programming skills. The most common responses to how GSoC improved their skills were:

• Improving the quality of their code through feedback from mentors, collaboration and learning more about the importance of code reviews.
• Gaining confidence in their coding skills and knowledge about best practices. Learning how to write more efficient code and to meet the org’s coding standards.
• Ability to read and understand real complex codebases, and learning how to implement code with other developer’s code.

Most challenging parts of GSoC

• Managing their time effectively with many other commitments.
• Initial days starting with the organization, understanding the codebase, and sometimes learning a new programming language along the way.
• Communicating with mentors and community members in different time zones and collaborating remotely.

Additional fun stats from GSoC Contributors

• 99% of GSoC contributors would recommend their GSoC mentors
• 98% of GSoC contributors plan to continue working with their GSoC organization
• 99% of GSoC contributors plan to continue working on open source
• 35% of GSoC contributors said GSoC has already helped them get a job or internship
• 84% of GSoC contributors said they would consider being a mentor
• 95% of GSoC contributors said they would apply to GSoC again

We know that’s a lot of numbers to read through, but folks ask us for more information and feedback on GSoC each year. Our hope is that we succeeded in providing additional details for this 2022 program. Every mentor and GSoC contributor took the time to fill in their evaluations and give us great written feedback on how the program affected them so we wanted to highlight this.

As we look forward to Google Summer of Code 2023, we want to thank all of our mentors, organization administrators, and contributors for a successful and smooth GSoC 2022. Thank you all for the time and energy you put in to make open source communities stronger and healthier.

Remember GSoC 2023 will be open for organization applications from January 23–February 7, 2023. We will announce the 2023 accepted GSoC organizations February 22 on the program site: g.co/gsoc. GSoC contributor applications will be open March 20–April 4, 2023.

By Stephanie Taylor, Program Manager – Google Open Source

We are thrilled to announce the 2023 Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program and share the timeline with you to get involved! 2023 will be our 19th consecutive year of hosting GSoC and we could not be more excited to welcome more organizations, mentors, and new contributors into the program.

With just three weeks left in the 2022 program, we had an exciting year with 958 GSoC contributors completing their projects with 198 open source organizations.

Our 2022 contributors and mentors have given us extensive feedback and we are keeping the big changes we made this year, with one adjustment around eligibility described below.

• Increased flexibility in project lengths (10-22 weeks, not a set 12 weeks for everyone) allowed many people to be able to participate and to not feel rushed as they wrapped up their projects. We have 109 GSoC contributors wrapping up their projects over the next three weeks.

• Choice of project time commitment there are now two options, medium at ~175 hours or large at ~350 hours, with 47% and 53% GSoC contributors, respectively.

• Our most talked about change was GSoC being open to contributors new to open source software development (and not just to students anymore). For 2023, we are expanding the program to be open to students and to beginners in open source software development.

Contributor applications for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2022 are now open!

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. 
Since 2005, GSoC has welcomed new developers into the open source community every year. The GSoC program has brought over 18,000 contributors from 112 countries together, with over 17,000 mentors from 746 open source organizations.

For 2022, GSoC made significant changes to expand the reach and flexibility of the program. The following are the key changes:

• All newcomers and beginners to open source 18 years and older may now apply to GSoC

• GSoC now supports both medium sized projects (~175 hours) and large projects (~350 hours)

• Projects can be spread out over 10–22 weeks

We invite students, graduates, and folks at various stages of their career to check out Google Summer of Code. Now that applications are open, please keep a few helpful tips in mind:

• Read the program rules, FAQ, contributor guide, and advice for applying

• Review the list of mentoring organizations and use filters to sort by programming language and categories

• Narrow down your list to 2-4 organizations and review their ideas list

• Reach out to the organizations via their contact methods listed on the GSoC site

• Engage with your organization early and often

Contributors may register and submit project proposals on the GSoC site from now until Tuesday, April 19th at 18:00 UTC.

Best of luck to all our applicants!

Romina Vicente, Program Manager – Google Open Source