GSoC forbids maintainers from participating (but provides orgs $500/student for the 12 weeks).

I'd strongly consider participating in this. It's 40x more money than GSoC for a similar time commitment and ~50x more than the money I'd personally make as a full time maintainer (I've been an org admin & mentor for GSoC for the past couple years).

> To participate in the Program, a GSoC Contributor must: be a student or a beginner to open source software development.

https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/rules - 7) 7.1) a) iv)

Bingo. It's the latest MSFT poster-child that'll be gently strangled / frankensteined in a few years, when people start gaming it.

Really, I don't think it'll take a few years.