<aside> đź“Ł The mentors will not provide draft proposal feedback on any draft emailed on Friday, March 29th or later, as it is too close to the application deadline.
As a reminder, final submissions need to be made to the Google Summer of Code portal rather than directly via email.
</aside>
For Google Summer of Code 2024, the Electron Outreach working group has developed 7 project ideas geared towards both JavaScript and C++ developers. Please have previous experience with either JavaScript or C++, depending on which idea you choose.
Pick an idea which interests you and that you understand well enough to create a solid proposal for implementing. We want potential contributors to use the proposal process to show they fully understand what they’ll be working on and how they’ll approach it, so we won’t give too much help beyond some pointers or clarifications.
If you’re comfortable enough with Electron and have your own idea for a project, you can submit a proposal for an idea of your own, but please know we’ll only accept a proposal that isn’t from the ideas list if it is very well thought out and detailed - if you don’t have a strong idea and know how to implement it, please stick to the list of ideas we’ve created.
📬 We’re happy to answer questions via email at [email protected]. Please do not email questions to individual mentors, as they may be missed!
In 2022, Electron received over 100 applications for Google Summer of Code. Our 2024 committee is 4 maintainers, working on Google Summer of Code part time. While we’d love to spend time helping each candidate with their proposal, we unfortunately don’t have the time or resources to directly work with 100+ candidates. That means we try to use our time as effectively as possible. Showing respect for our time goes a long way, and we’ll try to be respectful of your time and effort in return.
Here are some general guidelines for your first outreach:
Read the Contributor Guidance & Ideas List before reaching out: We spent time writing a document to answer the most common questions we thought we might receive, A) because we want to set you up for success and B) because we have limited time, and answering 75 emails with the same questions will become unsustainable quickly. Take some time to read these and see if your question might be answered before writing.
Explore Electron’s ecosystem and come with specific questions: Electron’s core repo is https://github.com/electron/electron, but the larger Electron ecosystem has many different repos. If there’s a project that you’re interested in, take some time to explore the linked repo - read through the “Issues” tab, look at recent PRs and release notes and get a sense of what the project is doing.
Coming with specific questions about your project is also very helpful to us. “How can I stand out” is a harder question for us to answer than “Why does Electron Forge do ${x}?” Don’t worry about asking “silly” questions, or questions that are “too easy”; any interest in learning about Electron is welcome!
Introduce yourself: If you reach out, feel free to tell us about your background, your interests as a developer and what you want to accomplish this summer. Feel free to share links and projects that you’re proud of. Anything that helps us get to know you better as a developer is welcome.
Send us finished draft proposals for feedback: We’d love to read your draft proposals. Please make sure proposals sent to us for initial feedback are 1) in a finished state, even if not perfect and 2) are sent long enough before the proposal deadline that we can read them and send back feedback - ideally, at least one week before the deadline. Keep in mind that we received many, many proposals in 2022. Sending your draft proposal to us two days before the deadline will not give us enough time to send you good feedback.
Ask overly broad, generic questions: Time spent answering questions that are already addressed in our Contributor Guidance is time taken away from looking at proposals or answering specific questions. Try to keep your questions specific. Generic questions asking for guidance will be directed back to our Contributor Guidance.