Honeynet Project Accepted for Google Summer of Code 2015

After a tense few days of waiting, which is always the most stressful part of GSoC for mentoring organizations and org admins, 19:00 UTC today was the moment of truth when some lucky orgs found out that they were accepted for GSoC 2015, and other orgs sadly discovered that they would not be taking part.

After missing GSoC 2014 we were particularly tense, but the great news is that we are very pleased to announce that The Honeynet Project has been accepted as a mentoring organization for GSoC 2015. Woohoo! It is going to be another exciting summer… :-)

Many thanks to Google for giving us the opportunity to participate for our sixth year of GSoC, we really appreciate it. And our commiserations to those orgs who were not selected. Having had unexpected experience of being passed over last year to make way for new orgs, and being completed gutted to hear that news, we really understand your pain. Hopefully you will still work on your projects anyway, then come back stronger next year.

You can view the full official list of the 137 lucky accepted GSoC 20105 mentoring orgs here:

https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/list/public/google/gsoc2015

Is is interesting to see that the number of accepted orgs is significantly down this year compared to previous years:

• 2015: 137/416 orgs.
• 2014: 190/371 orgs; 1304/6313 proposals (by 4420 students)
• 2013: 177/417 orgs; 1192/5999 proposals (by 4144 students)
• 2012: 180/406 orgs; 1212/6685 proposals (by 4258 students)
• 2011: 175/417 orgs; 1116/5474 proposals (by 3731 students)
• 2010: 151/367 orgs; 1026/5539 proposals (by 3464 students)

Which is both the smallest number of accepted orgs for many years, and also the lowest acceptance rate. Not sure what has changed (perhaps a focus on a smaller number of orgs this year to make things more manageable?), but we feel doubly lucky!

The next milestone is Student Registration beginning on March 16, 2015, at 19:00 UTC. Until then, students should be approaching potential mentoring orgs like The Honeynet Project to discuss project ideas with them. You can find everything you should need to know in the GSoC 2015 section of our public website, including our list of potential student project ideas and how to get in touch with us by IRC and email.

One of the best pieces of advice that we can give prospective students is start making contact early. It is much better to speak to a potential mentor now than leaving it to the very last minute, as you will have much more time to form ideas and work on your student application with the assistance of our mentors and org admins.

We are really looking forward to meeting another generation of enthusiastic and motivated students, and hopefully another great summer of code with GSoC 2015 and The Honeynet Project. Speak to you soon!