r/gsoc2025

So applications for LFX Fall 2026 are closed now, but the one thing that's still a black box is how competitive the projects you picked actually were. Were you up against 50 people or 2? No way to know from the portal.

Got kind of obsessed with figuring this out so vibe coded a quick site for it. You just punch in the 3 projects you applied to and it tells back what % of applicants also went for the same ones.

Some notes:

• Totally anonymous, no login or email needed
• Numbers update live as more people submit, so it gets more accurate over time
• Only works if enough of us actually use it, so the more data the better

Link: https://lfx2026.pythonanywhere.com/

If you've got a minute, drop your 3 picks in and share with anyone else who applied. Curious to see how it all turns out.

If you're looking out on getting your first PRs merged into an open source repository or looking to join popular open source programs like GSoC or LFX.

We are holding a workshop on best practices and things to avoid when getting started.

We are fellow developers who owe a lot of our careers to open source giving back. This is a FREE workshop and affiliated to an open source non profit repository.

Just drop your interest below or reach out to me directly and I'll share the link. The workshop is at 6pm IST on Saturday!

Link will come in discord.observal.io (copy paste this in your browser)

Hi guys. I am new to open source. I had raised a PR 2 months ago but it didn't got merged. Then I thought I need to raise issue first so raised an issue in different organization last week and it says unanswered. So lemme know what is the right process actually. What you guys do. And how you pick organizations or project. For the last one I had used Claude to explain the code base and then help with the Issue and I did where human touch was needed and understood what I was doing. So is this the right way or you need to write everything yourself or what. Tell me about approach.

Thanks in advance.

Is the Indian Tech market is really dead?? Or it's dead just for me as I am a teir 2 college student...

I did every possible thing

- they say make projects i did

- they say make open source contribution i did and I even went ahead contributed as gsoc contributor as well

- they say explore opportunities i did

- they say participate in hackathon it did

-they say grind leetcode i did

- they say if do cold mail I did

- they say have ats of more than 90 I did

What am I really missing? What else should I do juts to get a job as a fresher with decent package? I mean I am even okey with the rejections but these fuc\*\*\*\* ghosting is the thing that pisses me off.

Been strong for about 6 to 8 months tried more and more just to get ghosted by ats bots or hrs.

I mean even after surviving this phase some how and not loosing your mental sanity you survive just to be laid off one day and replaced by someone who is no way near your skills just beacuse they are lucky or even worse to be replacedby a machine???

Maybe that's the most depressing part.

It starts making you wonder if ambition even matters anymore.

Maybe in this market, you're supposed to just take whatever you can get, put your head down, have no expectations, and hope that if you're lucky, things get better with time.

Now honestly I even dont know what to say, I dont even want to take any advise now i guess I am at my lowest and just wanted to thank everyone who supported me throughout this journey and all the very best to all those who are still going on...

If you've tried to find a first open-source contribution (for GSoC, resume building, whatever), you've probably hit this: good-first-issue labels are everywhere, but the label tells you nothing about whether the maintainer actually reviews PRs, or whether the repo is dormant and the label's just stale. You end up manually digging through commit history and old PRs for every candidate repo, which doesn't scale.

I'm building a tool that scores repos on actual signals, maintainer response time, first-time-contributor merge rate, activity recency, pulled from the GitHub API, not just label presence. You'd filter by your stack/interests and get a ranked list with the score breakdown shown, not a black-box number.

Before I sink weeks into this: has this specific problem hit you? Would you actually use something like this, or do you have a workaround that already works fine? Genuinely want to know if I'm solving a real problem or a problem only I have.

hey everyone! just entered in 3rd year.

i recently got an internship, so i'll have the next 6 to 7 months to finally explore something i've never really had the chance to before: open source and gsoc.

i've contributed to open source within my college society and have even been a project admin/mentor there, but i've never prepared seriously for gsoc because i was always occupied with academics, hackathons, and internship prep.

i'd really appreciate if you could help me with a few doubts here:

* when should i actually start contributing if the gsoc ideas list comes later?
* should i contribute to the organization first and then pick a project once the ideas list is released?
* how do you identify organizations with active mentors and a healthy review process?
* are there any organizations that usually have multiple project ideas and are beginner-friendly?
* if i get selected for gsoc but my internship overlaps in june and july, is there any flexibility in the gsoc coding timeline?

any advice or personal experiences would be super helpful. thanks! :)