Well, I believe that dropping students to get the money can happen. What I don’t know is what pratice is worse for GSoC and the Open Source Community.

Also, I agree about deciding how much student deserves at the end of GSoC. This will make them work harder to have their projects done until the deadline.

Also, any evaluation, AFAIK, are subject to discussion with Google Folks. If a student disagree with his mentor evaluation, he can search Google folks, and try to show that he worked as expected and that he deserves his payment. Though, I’m afraid that this could flood the folks at Google with a lot of unhappy students that were droped because their mentors wanted their money for the organization.

Surely, that idea would need some kind of regulation to work as expected.

Thanks for you comment!

Following maurelio point i have something more to add..

what if the organization starts dropping students (because of a minor mistake) just to get the money ?

I would go in another direction… The student gets US$500 when the program starts as usual, then he only gets the other US$4k at the end of the program. In the midterm evaluation the mentor should say “this student did/didn’t good progress”.

No matter the answer the student should keep coding until the final evaluation when the mentor says “he deserves the whole $4k, he did great progress at midterm so he only deserves $2k or he didn’t do good progress at all so don’t pay him”.

You came up with a really good discussion and your point is valid. Congratulations for the post.

2) Sometimes…
a) In this case, you’ll have to trustu on student, which is not a good option. Also, the studnet will receive the money in his currency after paying some taxes to have the money converted, an than, he will have to convert it back to dollar, pay some other taxes to transfer the money to the org, and them the org will have to convert it back to its currency paying some more taxes. Doesn’t sound that good.

b) That doesn’t sound like a problem, because the person is going to get paid outside of the program.

Ddidn’t understand why in both cases it is worse for Google, if Google is willing to send this money out in any case, and in this case, the money is going to be paid for something useful (that even Google could make use of)

And, I think that Google’s goal is both: Have a lot of open source (because if it won’t be having more open source, why do they require that your software must have an open source license?) and success histories *arround* open source projects spreadding the word about google for free.

In both cases, the strategy meets Google’s goal.

The main problem with my proposed strategy, is that Google will have to spend 100% of the GSoC money, while they usually does spend only 80~90% of the money because of students failures. If Google does count with such failures in order to set their amount of slots, my strategy isn’t good.

BTW, the strategy is only an idea, and I posted it here in order to have it improved, and maybe help GSoC in someway. Thanks for your comment, and hope to have more feedback.

2) I don’t think giving the money to the organization is that good:

a) what if organization and students try to do something like dividing the money google gives to the organization? (you work just half program, and gets $3000… and the organization gets $2000)

b) what if organization start using the extra money to pay someone that doesn’t meet the program requirements?

I think in both cases, the final situation is good for the organization and the students and bad for Google…

by the way, the Google’s main intent is not having “more open source code out there”, but having a page full of successful histories and a bunch of students “spreading the word”. For free.

Furthermore, it is a real disrespect to Google and other students when someone just goes “inative” after joining the program and still tries to receive money.

I believe these students that were dropped at midterm evalutions in previous year never came back, but it would be good to enforce permanent exclusion from any and all Google programs.