Mentors Guide

Additional Resources

We've collected our favorite and most useful resources specific to GSoC here.

General Resources

If your organization has participated in GSoC previously, chances are there are mailing lists already set up and useful information in their archives; take a moment to look through them, especially around the launch times (February to March), community bonding period (April) and evaluation times (mid-July and end of August), for more details. The archives of the program mailing lists, particularly the private mentors list (below), are also quite useful.

No matter what, you want to take a look at the Program Frequently Asked Questions each year to make sure you have a good idea of the rules for the program for both yourself and your students. There's a wealth of information included in the FAQs each year, even for experienced participants. You can always find the latest information, including a link to the FAQs, at http://code.google.com/soc/.

Additionally, these resources are quite helpful:

Program IRC Channel: Several knowledgeable folks hang out in #gsoc on Freenode and would be happy to give you a pointer in the right direction.

Blog Posts: You can find material related to GSoC on the Google Open Source Blog at http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/search/label/gsoc. Your project may have a blog or newsletter where GSoC information was published in the past, as well.

Knowledge Base: If you're looking for advice for mentors or students, program promotional materials, presentations about GSoC, etc., start with the knowledge base http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/, particularly the wiki http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/wiki/WikiStart.

Mentor Summit Wiki: Google has traditionally held an annual mentor summit after GSoC wraps up each year. During the summit, many great discussions are held on all sorts of topics regarding the program and open source overall. Check out the summit wiki for session notes and to do some further collaboration. Instructions for getting a login account on the wiki are available on the private mentors list, or ping the program administrators for help. Anyone can view the wiki's contents at http://gsoc-wiki.osuosl.org/.

List of Organizations: Each year, the community creates a list of categorized list of mentoring organizations. You can find it linked from the Knowlege Base: Advice for Students page.
http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/wiki/AdviceforStudents

Mailing Lists

There are four program mailing lists.

Announcement Only List: For announcements from Google's program administrators only. Used infrequently.
http://groups.google.com/group/google-summer-of-code-announce

Program Discussion List: Open subscription list for the program. General talk about the program, light traffic except during the launch phase of the program each year. Typically this list is not hugely relevant except just prior to the announcement of accepted organizations and accepted students, as neither organizations nor students have access to the private lists until acceptance unless they have previously participated in the program. It is always excellent for you to stop by and encourage a newbie, though, so please don't totally ignore this list.
http://groups.google.com/group/google-summer-of-code-discuss

Students List: Private, invite-only list; students are subscribed to the list soon after they are accepted into GSoC. Successful student participants from previous years and students currently working on GSoC are subscribed to this list. Students who are dropped from the program are also removed from the list. While this list is supposed to give students a private place to discuss anything and everything so they aren't worried about looking silly elsewhere, more often than not the list traffic is mostly discussions of tracking numbers for shipments, tax forms and grumbles about t-shirt loss.
http://groups.google.com/group/google-summer-of-code-students-list

Mentors List: Private, invite-only list; mentors are subscribed to the list after their organization is accepted into the program and they register as mentors in the GSoC online system. This list is higher traffic at the beginning of the program and around the times of evaluations. Some great advice can be found on this list and in the archives, but it can also be noisy at times.
http://groups.google.com/group/google-summer-of-code-mentors-list

Books

Producing Open Source
Written by Karl Fogel. Excellent guide to Open Source development. Its available free online.
http://producingoss.com/

Google Summer of Code Mentors Guide
http://www.flossmanuals.net

Google Summer of Code Students Guide 
http://www.flossmanuals.net 

Associated Projects

Teaching Open Source
http://teachingopensource.org
irc : freenode #teachingopensource

What to Do When the Unexpected Happens?

Contact your Organization Administrator: He or she can help you figure out what to do next or contact Google for more help.

Talk to Google's Program Administrators: They have plenty of experience with all the corner cases and strange issues that can arise during GSoC. Email ospoadmin@gmail.com for help if you can't find one of the program admins in #gsoc on Freenode.