What is GSoC ?

Details about Google Summer Of code(GSoC)

what is GSoC?

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a program that matches  mentoring organizations with college and university student developers who are paid to write open source code. Each year, Google works with many open source, free software and technology-related groups to identify and fund proposals for student open source projects.

GSoC pairs accepted student applicants with mentors from participating projects. Accepted students gain exposure to real-world software development and an opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits. In turn, participating organizations are able to identify and bring in new developers more easily. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all; all code produced as part of the program is released under an open source license.

This program has brought together thousands of students and mentors from over 100 countries worldwide. At the time of writing, over 200 open source projects, from areas as diverse as operating systems and community services, have participated as mentoring organizations for the program. Successful students have widely reported that their participation in GSoC made them more attractive to potential employers and that the program has helped greatly when embarking on their technical careers. This is the summer internship sponsored  by  Google.

Goals of the Program

The program has several goals:

• Get more open source code written and released for the benefit of all.
• Inspire young developers to begin participating in open source development.
• Help open source projects identify and bring in new developers.
• Provide students the opportunity to do work related to their academic pursuits during the summer: "flip bits, not burgers."
• Give students more exposure to real-world software development (for example, distributed development and version control, software licensing issues, and mailing list etiquette).

What is student criteria ?

A student participating in GSoC is typically a college or university student;  the only academic requirement is that the accepted applicants should be enrolled in an accredited academic institution. Students must also be at least 18 years of age in order to participate. Students come from a variety of academic backgrounds, and though most students are enrolled in a Computer Science program there is no requirement that they be studying CS; past student participants in GSoC have come from disciplines as varied as Ecology, Medicine, and Music.

Students submit project proposals to the various organizations participating in GSoC. The organizations select which student proposals they would like to see funded by Google.

Selecting a Student

There are some student qualifications that are important for any successful GSoC experience. The student needs to be highly technically skilled, needs to have good communication skills, and needs to be a hard worker with sufficient available time to succeed. The entire selection procedure take place on this platform- https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2016

They select students on the basis of their contribution,interview performance & the proposal detailed about project’s implementation.