Talk:Google Summer of Code/2025

Proposing a project / being mentor

@DTankersley (WMF): Just to confirm: if we (Wikimedia Finland) want to participate in Google Summer of Code with a project idea and we have suitable mentors, is the assumption correct that WMF will register as an organization by February 11 and Wikimedia Finland doesn't need to do this? Wikimedia Finland's task would be to add our project idea to this page, find mentors, and submit the project by March 24? Zache (talk) 11:48, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Hello @Zache - we've already applied to be an organization with GSoC 2025 and are awaiting their announcement of which organizations will be selected for this year's round. If you have a project and at least two mentors, yes, please add that information to the Ideas section before March 24th. We're looking forward to hearing more about your project! :) DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the confirmation :) --Zache (talk) 17:05, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Organization not accepted?!

I can't see Wikimedia in the list of accepted organizations... anyone has any idea what might be happening?

If Wikimedia is really not accepted that's quite a shock for us (Commons Android app), we already had 10+ students interested in our task, many of whom already invested a lot of their time getting familiar with the app and sending patches.

I am still in denial, any further information much appreciated. Syced (talk) 13:08, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

@LGoto (WMF) Nemoralis (talk) 21:48, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

Same, Lingua Libre had 3 interested interns before publishing our 2 projects. Just shared the news with the first team member. Maybe we can find a way forward (see 2 sections below) Yug (talk) 16:30, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

Why did Wikimedia not apply as an org for GSoC 2025?

Deb Tankersley, Lani Goto, Gopa Vasanth, would you mind detailing what happened? Not to point fingers, but to have a honest analysis on which we can act to make sure we can participate in 2026. Or was it a deliberate decision to not apply? Thanks a lot! Syced (talk) 12:11, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Seconding this, we have several disappointed students and are hoping to avoid this happening again in the future. Misaochan (talk) 13:05, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

@Misaochan and @Syced - please see my note below. DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 13:48, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

@DTankersley (WMF) Thanks for the clarification, and no worries. We will try to participate in Outreachy instead. Misaochan (talk) 14:53, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

GSoC 2025 and Wikimedia

As we’ve noted previously, Wikimedia will not be participating in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2025.

To be clear, I was responsible for filling out the organization application form and somehow inadvertently missed a step in the process. I was unaware of this oversight until last week, after Google announced their decision as to which organizations would participate in this year’s GSoC program. As part of our Developer Outreach Team’s communication with Google, we were advised that since I had missed a step in the application process, Wikimedia would not be participating in this year's GSoC program.

I deeply regret my error and know that this is a big disappointment for the mentors and prospective interns that had hoped to participate this year, but I completely respect Google’s decision.

Looking forward to next year, we will do our best to ensure all process steps are completed in our application to be a participating organization in the 2026 GSoC cohort. Note: this was also posted on the Wikitech-l mailing list.

Sincerely, DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 13:47, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks Deb for the honest response, as everyone was wondering what we needed to improve.

Knowing that, I believe Wikimedia has all chances to be accepted as an organization in the following years as long as it applies. That's a better situation to be in rather than having to worry about rejections Wikimedia can't control.

I trust the proper workflow/reminders have been put in place for the next years. Srishti might be the best person to double-check if you want, otherwise we are also happy to help. Thanks! Syced (talk) 22:40, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello Deb, thanks for the quick explainer.

I would like to suggest a way out and upward. Given we had 10 projects last year and most interns are Indians developers with max 3000US$ internship stipends, WMF's GSOC is rather a « modest budget » program. Yet it delivers solid tech pushes and it occupies an important niche. Indeed, given the cancellation of the Grants:Technology program and with most of our interns rarely matching Outreachy's target demographics, I'm unaware of any other WM community tech fund for 2025. All together, could it be possible to request a 30k~40k US$ rescue funding, exceptionally provided by WMF rather than Google ? It seems worth a quick try. It would be a tiny drop in WMF yearly tech budget and help us maintain our projects' dynamics. User:DTankersley (WMF), let us known if we can help to support such avenue. If anyone as an idea, it's welcome too. Yug (talk) 16:12, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

+1 for this. I was also already thinking that it would be general to be nice to have more small grant systems like GSoC/Outreachy. --Zache (talk) 03:43, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

+1. I hope WMF as an organization can provide emergency funding and other kind of support to compensate for the mistake in some way. As Syced mentioned here, many students have been prepared, learning the code base and sending patches. WMF and the community would lose a lot if we fail to retain them in a timely manner. whym (talk) 08:59, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello @Syced, @Yug, @Zache, and @Whym - thanks for the input and suggestions!

For many years, the Wikimedia Foundation has been involved with several externally hosted open source internship programs including Google Summer of Code (GSoC), Outreachy, and more. We have also conducted a Wikimedia Foundation Product & Technology (P&T) Software Engineering Internship Program - it started in 2023 and the current 2025 cohort is in full swing right now. Over the last three years, in the WMF P&T Internship Program, we've sponsored 17 interns on their technical journey.

In regards to this year's GSoC program, we have already contacted all the prospective Wikimedia mentors that had signed up to see if they'd be interested in moving their projects to the Outreachy internship program that officially kicks off in June 2025. Unfortunately, Outreachy has already closed the application period for interns but the mentors and project application period is still open until March 7th, 2025. Looking at this from a financial standpoint, both GSoC and Outreachy pay their accepted interns a stipend for their 3 months of work, but the Outreachy stipend actually pays more to their interns - $7,000 - vs the $3,000 that GSoC pays.

Outreachy runs two internship programs per year, June - August and December - March. The second program for Outreachy 2025 will have sign ups for mentors and interns starting sometime in the early fall. The next round of the Wikimedia Product & Technology Internship program will kick off in late 2025 with the expectation of the program running from February through June 2026.

If you have a specific project that doesn't fit into any of these programs, please let us know and we'll see if we can solve it.

Note: this was also posted on a thread in wikitech-l. DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 16:52, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

@DTankersley (WMF) I think that what @Yug referred to is that Outreachy is not a substitute for GSoC from applicant point of view, as it is much more selective on who can apply, which rules out most males. Just as a note, one path forward that I was thinking as an alternative was that there are other organizations approved for GSoC which could be umbrella organizations for the projects in 2025 (Python, OpenStreetMap, Django, Rust, Dart come to mind first). Some of the projects could try to submit project ideas through them. --Zache (talk) 17:40, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello and thanks to everyone for chiming in here. We know how much these internships mean to people, and that they have great value as a chance to give new people exposure to our projects and professional opportunities within our technical work. This is why we support so many internship programs throughout the year. That said, organizing new internships and technical grant programs takes a lot of planning along with programmatic and budget support inside the WMF. So unfortunately, spinning up a brand new program isn’t feasible at this time. Beyond that, we will do our best to ensure that Wikimedia participates in GSOC next year. Note: this was also posted on a thread in wikitech-l. DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 22:45, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello @Zache, @DTankersley (WMF),

Zache, thanks for your idea as well, maybe one of my projects can be reshaped to fit in with OSM indeed. Still 2 weeks to explore that... But i'm skeptical on the possibility to jump into another organisation this quickly.

@DTankersley (WMF),

Thank for additional explainers and news avenues (P&T internship). To answer your March 5th message, yes, while i didnt posted them on the GSOC25 page i've been working on 2 GSOC25 internship projects and one Winter 2025-26 Outreachy, see Lingua Libre/GSOC25. I focus again on Lingua Libre and Language services within the WM movement. Those July-August GSOC25 were planed to run synchronously with a May-August 15k€ WMFR investment on Lingualibre. The GSoC25 cancellation sends us off since our team constrains doesn't fit into any of the above alternative programs. So i'm still trying to find emergency funding of 6k$ for two prescreened interns who were interested to join us this summer 25. Maybe we can discuss this further via email or TG ? Yug (talk) 21:44, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello @Yug, let's move this to email, please. DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 15:53, 18 March 2025 (UTC)