Event Date: February 22-23 Mode: Hybrid (Online and multiple in-person locations) Number of Partners: 10 (refer to the tentative partners’ list below)
Season of Commits
This is an introductory edition, details here.
It’s an 8-week online program designed for Indian students to contribute to Indian free and open-source projects under mentorship.
Date: May 15 - July 15 2025 Total Number of Projects: 10 (refer to the tentative partners’ list below) Total Number of Students: 80-100 Mentors: 1-3 per project Stipend:
Participants: ₹5,000-10,000, based on performance.
We are open to include Indian commercial FOSS projects if they can contribute financially (open for suggestions). This support would help the FOSS United Foundation reduce the program’s overall costs, potentially around ₹2,00,000.
These two events are strategically scheduled for sustainability; FOSS Hack serves as an introduction to the partner projects. The 2.5-month gap between FOSS Hack and the Season of Commits provides students with ample time to learn more about the projects and prepare their statements of purpose on how they can contribute.
FOSS Hack continues its mission to encourage both students and professional developers to develop and contribute to free and open-source software. This year, FOSS Hack’s partner projects will also connect to the new program, Season of Commits, facilitating deeper contributions and engagements.
Budget
FOSS Hack Prize Pool: ₹500,000
FOSS Hack Hosting Costs: ₹500,000
Season of Commits Stipends (Participants): ~₹700,000
Season of Commits Stipends (Mentors): ~₹300,000
Total: ₹20,00,000
We request the community to share their comments before 15th of Dec. It will help us start planning these programs accordingly.
Season of Commits definitely sounds a wonderful initiative.
I am currently maintaining API Dash which is a FOSS API client and was one of the winning projects in FOSS Hack 3.0.
We have grown the project over time and built a community around it.
The project also participated in Google Summer of Code 2024.
We have guided a lot of students into making their first meaningful open source contribution and would love to participate in Season of Commits next year.
Can you kindly let me know how we can apply as a partner project.
Re. FOSS Hack, one idea is to have a period before the hackathon where participants submit their thoughts, reasons and motivations behind what they’re planning to build, and having a group of mentors help them polish their ideas, or brainstorm new ones. This should help with the issue of abandoning and poor quality of projects.
If we decide to go with this, I can volunteer to put together the mentors group and be one of the mentors. Do share your thoughts. One thing I don’t have clarity on is: would the mentors be the judges as well or would there be a separate judges group. I guess the latter.
Yep, there was a separate group, but my doubt is if they still would be separate if we go ahead with this idea. I was thinking since mentors would already have all the context about the participants, why not make them the judges too (but not sure since there’s judging for Season of Commits too).
Judges are typically a group of people invited from the community (mostly active volunteers and industry partners/sponsors etc.). Mentors are usually selected through an application process - pretty much anyone who wants to mentor students can be a part of this group. While both the groups are typically exclusive, judges are also free to mentor students if they’d like.
Do note that while we did have mentors for FOSSHack 2024, there wasn’t a lot of activity in the mentoring channels/calls than usual. I’m guessing this is because participants prefer to use chatGPT now
This year, maintainers/contributors of the partner projects will also be mentoring students who wish to contribute to those specific projects.
Mentors are usually selected through an application process - pretty much anyone who wants to mentor students can be a part of this group.
Let’s only accept mentors who have built a FOSS library/tool/product?
Do note that while we did have mentors for FOSSHack 2024, there wasn’t a lot of activity in the mentoring channels/calls than usual. I’m guessing this is because participants prefer to use chatGPT now
I think it’s because (1) there wasn’t really an incentive for participants to collaborate with mentors and/or (2) there weren’t enough capable mentors and/or (3) there was no process for “participants to submit their thoughts, reasons and motivations behind what they’re planning to build, and having a group of mentors help them polish their ideas, or brainstorm new one”.
This year, maintainers/contributors of the partner projects will also be mentoring students who wish to contribute to those specific projects.
(2)/(3) agreed with this. Not “anyone” should be allowed to be a mentor I feel. Moreover, having selective mentors is helpful because if the mentor himself is experienced they can deeply explain details with better technicality. Virtual mentorship is already a big problem.
Not (1) :D? By (1), I meant generally most people see hackathons as a quick, fun way to just build something and make some quick money, so who would want to collaborate with mentors to make something actually useful/fun/different/long-lasting. Today I saw a post about someone winning a $9000 hackathon prize and it was mind-blowing to think that even that project is going to get abandoned like most hackathon projects.
I’ll share my experience. We were building a screenshot tool which would have built-in imagemagick stuff which I use in my system to create a macOS like Screenshot (replication of Cleanshot X), but I myself had a lot of problems. Issue was that there were people knowing python around me, but most of them came from Windows and MacOS hence they ended up knowing nothing about GTK.
Incentivization part – I don’t know much about it, that might somewhere be useful (?)
Sorry, yes. Mentors are still required to have at least some experience contributing to/building FOSS.
I didn’t mention it explicitly because last year no one really applied for mentoring . We reached out to people (who were anyway active FOSS contributors) from our end so that wasn’t really a filter.
I think it’s because (1) there wasn’t really an incentive for participants to collaborate with mentors and/or (2) there weren’t enough capable mentors and/or (3) there was no process for “participants to submit their thoughts, reasons and motivations behind what they’re planning to build, and having a group of mentors help them polish their ideas, or brainstorm new one”.
Agreed, the mentorship program was pretty much last minute. Happy to see you’re interested in volunteering for this and looking forward to improving this!
(2)/(3) agreed with this. Not “anyone” should be allowed to be a mentor I feel. Moreover, having selective mentors is helpful because if the mentor himself is experienced they can deeply explain details with better technicality. Virtual mentorship is already a big problem.
. We reached out to people (who were anyway active FOSS contributors) from our end so that wasn’t really a filter.