The Proposal That Almost Wasn’t: How I Faced My Fears and Applied for GSoC

The time was late 2022, around the time when I was accepted into college, when I first learned about the world of open source software and how it works. Being a college fresher, I was intrigued to learn more about FOSS(Free and Open Source Software) on my own.

Then in 2023, a session was held by one my college seniors who had already got accepted into Google Summer of Code(GSoC) that year. He shared his journey about how he got accepted into GSoC. This motivated me to try to get accepted into GSoC myself. But it was easier said than done.

I chose an Organisation which aligned with my interests and the technologies I was already familiar with, which happened to be DBpedia. 

DBpedia work with knowledge graphs and the semantic web. They also happen to be at the forefront of combining the world wide web and the semantic graphs so as to make machines better understand the content on the internet, that is, they work on the semantic web. (check them out at https://www.dbpedia.org/)

Then I started to research on how to create a decent proposal for the project I was interested in. They showcased an example proposal about how to write the proposal and honestly speaking the proposal was so well written that I was astounded whether I can ever create a proposal that good.

This is perhaps the biggest reason why I deterred from applying for one year. Finally, this year I mustered up the courage to finally at least try to write a proposal which I could submit in an attempt to expose myself to the world of open source software or at the very least learn something out the experience.

I took a look at their forum for this year's GSoC projects and found the one which is the most relatable to me. I reached out to the concerned mentor and admin for that project.

I thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who gave me the mental strength and tenacity to take up this mantle of creating this proposal by providing me with such wonderful mentors and teachers to help me to create this proposal.

I owe thanks to Tom Soru and Abdulsobur Oyewale. They have guided me through out the proposal creation phase for 2 weeks by giving me suggestions and overall guiding me throughout the entire process. I also thank Ronit Bannerjee for conducting the session on GSoC (yes, he is my senior that I talked about earlier) without which I might never have about this wonderful program at all.