Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program aimed to provide the ecosystem to bring university students to contribute to open sourced projects of International organizations. The experience empowers both students and mentors alike to become better developers by teaming up to work collaboratively, yet remotely, towards the final product.

Google hosts this event every year to instill the values of open source deep for the leaders of tomorrow. The summer program provides immense exposure with noteworthy incentives for the scholars. By the time the event ends, several open sourced projects are well enhanced thanks to the many dynamic minds that worked behind it.

Source: Google Developers Channel, YouTube

Since 2005, the program has had a growing participation from all parts of the world, resulting in greater skill development and more output results. Statistics from Google’s Open Source Blog show that GSoC 2018 had 605 selected students from India, proudly taking the first place in terms of participation per country.

From Govt. Model Engineering College, the college to which FOSSMEC is affiliated, there are 4 students who got selected for the organizations mentioned in parenthesis:

The scholars completed their projects by August 2018. They collectively decided to share their experience and tips to fellow students of the institution on how to prepare and apply for Google Summer of Code confidently in the upcoming years.

The experience:

Adarsh did his GSoC with CloudCV (based at West Virginia). During the application phase, he reached out to the organization by interacting with them on the Gitter Channel and would everyday try to solve others doubts while getting his own cleared. By diving deep into the community he started to appreciate the work and the ecosystem of the organization.

With a clear objective of serving this organization, he compiled a 15 page proposal with a humongous list of actions he would like to do if selected. To validate his claims, he wisely spent the time between proposal submission and result declaration to contribute to their projects. When he got selected, it was a great moment and the summer that came greatly made him a better developer. The summer that came he extensively contributed to the project and made a lot of friends cross continents. But not everything was smooth sail; at one point he had to call his mentor in the USA at 2AM in the morning to rectify errors. Despite these hardships, he persisted and emerged victorious.

Today looking back he says it was not the stipend or the success that he cherishes the most, but rather the experience, the community and the projects that brought a positive change in him.

Saran is a final year student and has always had the passion for designing and modeling. He participated in Google Code-in back in 2011. He would design stickers and other products from his system. Saran applied for GSoC 2018 to BRL CAD, the same organization to which he significantly contributed back in 2012–13 so they warmly welcomed him. To verify if the candidate genuinely had the skills, they gave him the task to make a simple hello world program using the specific tools and submit it to the sourceforge repository. When they saw the progress he made, they were convinced of his potential.

Saran chose the project idea that piqued his interest. By the fifth week, the organization gained trust in Saran and granted him commit rights (which exist even today — he is one of the very few round the world who have this access right). In the summer that came, he significantly contributed to the project. When hurdles came a simple conversation on the channel would rectify the same. Though there was a challenge of timing between India and that of the mentors, the two decided to meet at a time regularly. In the end Saran had a fulfilling experience and has properly documented his entire experience for others to learn from. You can read his final report over here

Aswin is the youngest of the 4 scholars from MEC, currently in his sophomore year. When he applied for GSoC at the last moment, he was not sure if there was enough content to substantiate his proposal.

So to compensate, he spent the time between proposal submission and proposal selection to effectively contribute to Zulip. Seeing his dedication and capability, they selected him and he spent the summer making the application better.

He was also fortunate enough to attend the Zulip meetup and bond with other developers. You can read all about his experience in much more detail over here.

A final year student, Vidyadheesha did his GSoC at Apertium, a free/open-source platform for machine translation and language technology. His contribution involved developing a rule-based translation system for Kannada-Marathi pair for Apertium.

Though it may sound fancy, he started from absolute zero knowledge about linguistic. It was his ability to Google his doubts and learn progressively that helped him complete this project. Although he did not meet the proposed goal, he did what ever he could under 3 months, and that experience empowered him for a lifetime.

You can read more about his work over here.