What GSoC and eBay have in common

What have GSoC and eBay got in common? At first, it may appear as an odd question.

In fact, there is a straightforward answer: action seems to happen at the last minute. Up to last week, many students had only submitted very basic placeholder applications on the Debian wiki but I've now seen a couple of more fully documented proposals arriving at the last minute.

Some of these applications have improved as a result of people contacting the students who put their names on the wiki and referring them to useful resources such as successful applications from 2012

Many students are busy with exams, some have only discovered GSoC at the last minute, but this doesn't mean they are any less talented than those who have spent weeks researching a project idea.

Now is a good time for any member of the open source community (not just Debian participants and not just mentors) to have a look over the student applications:

• Do you like the student's ideas?
• Can you suggest a coding test, e.g. writing a unit test for some code related to their idea?
• Can you help them with resources or documents to support their idea?
• Would you want to test their work as it progresses? Would you be an early adopter?
• Is the student local for you? Could you invite them to a local Debian or LUG meeting?
• If the student is not selected for GSoC, would your company or somebody you know employ them or make a crowd-funding contribution to enable their project to go ahead?