Hello Evan, Google SoC is a very good programme to invite new contributors to an open source project, it allows incentives for the mentee to learn and provides a structure for the organization/project managers to dedicatedly mentor or guide interested contributors to become full time members of the projects.
This is an extract from the mentor guide: ``` Staying in touch <https://community.apache.org/gsoc/guide-to-being-a-mentor.html#staying-in-touch> All mentors/prospective mentors *must* subscribe to [email protected], our list for coordinating mentor activities. This is where mentor specific issues are dealt with, and where announcements will be made. We only accept subscriptions to mentors@ from addresses known to belong to ASF committers, so please use your @apache.org address to subscribe if possible, or at least an address that we can match to your @apache.org address via the ASF’s private/committers/info or private/committers/MailAlias.txt data. Once the ASF is confirmed as a mentoring organisation mentors must register with the GSoC webapp, and request to become a mentor for the ASF organization. Make sure that the email address you use for that (it’s often your @gmail.com address by default) is ‘‘‘registered as a mail alias for your Apache account at (https://id.apache.org)’’’ so that we can match it to your ASF account. If you are interested in mentor programme administration please also subscribe to [email protected]. If you are planning on mentoring as part of the GSoC programme you also need to register with Google. See our GSoC <https://community.apache.org/gsoc/> page for more information. How much effort is involved with being a mentor? <https://community.apache.org/gsoc/guide-to-being-a-mentor.html#how-much-effort-is-involved-with-being-a-mentor> Most mentors spend between three and five hours per week with their students. Most of this time is spent encouraging them. Within the ASF we like to think that the whole project community will help the student, just as they would any other community member. If your project is supportive in this way, you may be able to get away with spending less time yourself. However, as mentor *you* are responsible for evaluating the student and helping them deliver on their commitments. The GSoC Mentoring Guide <https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/resources/guide#mentor_guide> has plenty of useful materials for mentors. ``` You can learn more about it here: https://community.apache.org/gsoc/guide-to-being-a-mentor.html Here is also the list of projects under apache that have submitted their project ideas for GSoC 2026: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/COMDEV/GSoC+2026+Ideas+list It does require a lot of effort from the maintainer side, but the process can yield positive results for the project if the mentee continues to contribute after the programme. Like Yousuf, I have also understood certain parts of the codebase well and feel that I can work dedicatedly on improving that part. I would recommend that you see the requirements as outlined by Apache and check the availability of mentors for GSoC, as it's not a small undertaking and requires their time to review the mentee's work. Sincerely, Yuvraj Singh Chauhan On Fri, Feb 20, 2026 at 11:48 PM Evan Rusackas <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Yusuf! > > Personally, I'm not really familiar with Google SoC. If the ASF is > officially participating, and there's a "template" of how projects > participate, I'd be curious to learn more. I'm also not sure what the > obligations/benefits/expectations would be for the Superset maintainers to > properly support it. In other words, if it's low overhead for us, brings > more contributions/contribtors, and helps everyone, I'd love to learn more > about it. > > Let us know all the relevant details (maybe they're part of your proposal?) > and we can go from there! > > Thanks, > > Evan > > On Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 9:37 AM Yousuf Ansari <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > Hello Superset community, > > > > I have been contributing to Superset frontend recently, including work on > > ECharts, deck.gl, and mixed-timeseries related fixes and improvements. I > > am > > interested in taking on a larger, structured frontend enhancement > project. > > > > I wanted to check whether Apache Superset is planning to participate in > > Google Summer of Code 2026 under the ASF umbrella. If there are any > > discussions around this, if Superset plans to participate, I would be > happy > > to draft a proposal aligned ongoing frontend priorities. > > > > Thank you for your time. > > > > Best regards, > > Yousuf Ansari > > >
