We’re very happy to announce that Ruby on Rails has been accepted as an organization for the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2017 edition!
The GSoC is a program proposed by Google that allows college students (who are at least 18 years old) to contribute to open source projects during the summer (from May 30 to August 21) and get paid for that!
Rails has already participated in the past and many different projects have been achieved through this program and are now invaluable in the framework’s ecosystem like the web console, the RubyBench site or the rails-ujs project.
Students need to propose an idea that will improve the project they are willing to work on and eventually the different steps that will be tackled to achieve it. Throughout the process, students are guided by one or several mentors. Mentors are here to make sure that students go in the right direction and help them if they stumble against problems.
This can be a very interesting and rewarding experience for students as they can learn a lot from more experienced developers and it’s an easy way to get involved in the open source world.
A list of possible ideas is already available if you want to work on Ruby on Rails this summer but feel free to propose your own if you want to work on something different and you still think it can be valuable for the project.
If you are interested in getting involved, please join the mailing list and let us know what you would like to work on. Thus, you can get early feedback and avoid going in the wrong direction or putting too much effort in a project that may not be accepted.
Student applications will be open on March 20 and will end on April 3. Make sure to keep an eye on the timeline if you are willing to participate to this program. You can find the application template on our wiki.
If you are not a student, you can still get involved by participating on the mailing list or by applying as a mentor!
As a side note, a similar project is available and is aiming at getting more women involved in the open source world: Rails Girls Summer of Code. Unlike GSoC, this project is exclusively about Ruby on Rails, it’s not restricted to students and there are no age limitations. Applications are open and will close very soon though, on March 8.
Useful resources: