We are very excit­ed that FreeCAD has been select­ed as a pro­gram for the 2023 Google Sum­mer of Code. While we’ve par­tic­i­pat­ed in part­ner­ship with oth­er orga­ni­za­tions in the past, this is the first time we’ve sub­mit­ted an appli­ca­tion direct­ly our­selves. We received some great assis­tance from a num­ber of folks at FOSDEM 2023, so a huge THANK YOU to every­one who has made this possible.

Of course, now the real work begins! If you, or any­one you know, is inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing in Google Sum­mer of Code, take a look at our project ideas page, and the GSoC check­list on the wiki. Or maybe you are already an expe­ri­enced FreeCAD user who has ideas of your own… reach out to us to dis­cuss them, either on the FreeCAD Forum, Face­book, Mastodon, Twit­ter, Dis­cord, car­ri­er pigeon, or by con­tact­ing a poten­tial men­tor directly. 

GSoC is about get­ting peo­ple involved and con­tribut­ing to open source over the long-term. As such, we heav­i­ly weight our appli­ca­tion selec­tion process towards stu­dents that are inter­est­ed in remain­ing involved in FreeCAD and open source soft­ware devel­op­ment long after GSoC has end­ed. GSoC is not a job. If you think this is just a sum­mer job, then GSoC is prob­a­bly not for you. It’s only like a job in terms of plan­ning your time com­mit­ment over the summer.

Addi­tion­al­ly, sub­mis­sions are grad­ed based on per­cep­tion of the sub­mit­ter’s abil­i­ties to com­plete the task with­in the pro­gram time­frame, gen­er­al con­sen­sus on the tech­ni­cal approach being pro­posed, and over­all inter­est in hav­ing such mod­i­fi­ca­tions made to FreeCAD. Par­tic­u­lar notice is made of stu­dents that are respon­sive to ques­tions and read­i­ly inter­ac­tive in the IRC chan­nel or on the forum. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is a great thing.

If this sounds like it’s for you, con­sid­er apply­ing — appli­ca­tions are open 20 March to 4 April.