Google Summer of Code 2025

[Kaoticz]

I wanted to ask if you’ve ever considered participating in Google Summer of Code (GSoC). As you may know, GSoC is designed to introduce new contributors to open-source projects by matching contributors (usually students) with mentors for a few months of focused work. For Avalonia, this could be an opportunity to welcome fresh talent, mentor developers, and possibly cultivate long-term contributors to your project. The structure of GSoC encourages participants to remain engaged with open-source well beyond the program itself, which could provide Avalonia with ongoing contributions from motivated developers.

I believe that you could greatly benefit from this by fostering a new generation of contributors while showcasing the strength and flexibility of your framework to a broader audience. It's a way to build lasting relationships within the open-source community and inspire the next wave of developers passionate about AvaloniaUI. Plus, GSoC provides funding for students, motivating them to dedicate time to meaningful contributions.

Applications for organizations typically open in the last week of January and remain open for about three weeks. If you’re interested, it might be helpful to start preparing some project ideas and proposals ahead of time. Project ideas can range from bug fixes to the introduction of new features, and are categorized by how much time they need to be completed:

• Small size projects: should take about 90 hours
• Medium size projects: should take about 175 hours
• Large size projects: should take about 350 hours

I believe Avalonia’s participation could be a great opportunity to strengthen the community, expand the framework’s reach, and leave a lasting impact on new contributors.

Here are some links if you'd like to learn more about the GSoC:

• Google's Guidelines on how organizations should define project ideas
• FAQ for developers
• FAQ for mentoring organizations
• Timeline for the GSoC, to give you a general idea of how long each phase of the event takes. This should get updated in 2025.

If you're curious about what kind of organizations take part in the event, here is the list of participating organizations in GSoC 2024. You can see some big names in there, such as Git, Ffmpeg, Chromium, and LibreOffice. Having Avalonia in this list would be awesome.

I'd love to hear your thoughts!