r/gsoc2025

Hi everyone,

I'm planning to apply for the LFX Mentorship Fall 2026 program. Last year, I missed an important part of the process because I didn't submit my proposal in time, so this year I want to prepare much earlier.

I'm particularly interested in AI/ML projects and have been contributing to open-source projects such as Docling and LlamaIndex.

I have a few questions:

• Where do organizations usually publish their Fall LFX project ideas before they appear on the LFX portal?
• Do mentors expect prospective applicants to start contributing before the application period opens?
• Which organizations have active AI/ML projects and welcome new contributors?
• Besides the official LFX portal, are there GitHub repositories, mailing lists, Slack/Discord communities, or other places I should monitor?

I'd really appreciate any advice from previous LFX mentees or mentors on how they found projects early and successfully prepared their proposals.

Thank you!

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for advice from people who've been GSoC contributors, mentors, or long-term open source contributors.

Earlier this year, I was contributing to an Apache project. I worked closely with one of the mentors on a feature, discussed the design over Slack, and wrote a GSoC proposal. Unfortunately, my proposal was rejected.

After that, I honestly lost motivation and stopped working on the feature. I assumed there wasn't much point continuing since I wasn't part of GSoC anymore. It's now been about two months, and I haven't made any progress at all.

Today, the mentor unexpectedly messaged me on Slack and asked:

"How about the progress? There will be the mid term estimation of GSoC."

That completely caught me off guard because I'm not a GSoC contributor.

Now I'm confused about what I should do.

1. Has anyone had a mentor follow up after their proposal was rejected?

2. Is this just a friendly status check, or do maintainers sometimes still expect contributors to continue working outside GSoC?

3. If you were in my position, would you invest the time to finish the feature knowing there is no stipend or GSoC certificate anymore?

4. How would you honestly respond after making zero progress for two months?

I'm not looking for sympathy - I'm genuinely trying to understand how situations like this are normally handled in open source communities.