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I see that GNOME, GCC, GNU Mailman, GNU Octave and GNU Radio are on the list. What does it mean for the GNU Project to participate separately?

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The larger GNU projects that have the manpower and ecosystem to deal with this on their own usually apply separately. The GNU ecosystem is much much bigger than them though. And its the smaller projects that usually benefit the most out of GSoC. So its quite unfortunate that GNU has been left out this year.

I started out as a GSoC student for GNU Wget 10 years ago and am now the maintainer. Many smaller projects like GNU Poke, MHD, coreutils, lilypond, Guix, etc. do really rely on a fresh batch of contributors every year that we try to convert into regular long term contributors.

indeed. i also remember at least at some point umbrella organizations were preferred because they could support many other smaller projects. so it's actually surprising that GNU as umbrella organization did not get accepted. any of the individual GNU projects that did get accepted could have instead joined the GNU umbrella if they were rejected individually.

Good point. I noticed it because of GNU Guix, but it looks like there are other projects that are perhaps too small to apply alone.

https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/archive/2020/organizatio...

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