Portal:GSoC/Intro

Since 2005, the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program that offers mentees stipends to write code for free and open source projects. openSUSE participated in the program several times already. During that time GSoC brought together over 80 contributors with mentors from our project, worldwide. Mentees paired with our mentors gain exposure to free and open source software development, and in turn openSUSE is able to identify and bring in new developers. Best of all, more open source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.

GSoC works like this:

1. openSUSE gathers a list of ideas for things to do during GSoC and mentors that can accompany these ideas
2. openSUSE applies to Google with that list of ideas and people that can mentor these ideas
3. If Google likes the ideas they choose openSUSE as one of the organizations which can engage mentees
4. Mentees propose to work on a specific idea and mentors choose the student that they think fits best
5. Google assigns slots to openSUSE depending on the quality of the proposals and mentors
6. openSUSE picks contributor/mentor pairs for their slots
7. Contributors work with mentors on the idea