For many years now, Haiku is a regular participant in the Google Summer of Code program, which offers paid mentorship to people willing to work full time on Haiku for a few months. Google handles the payments, while mentors from our developer team handle the onboarding of the new contributors and guide them through the project.
Itās a bit sad that only three people could be selected at the end.
There were so many proposals this year,so I had hoped to see a lot of progress this summer.
But the topics that got selected are interesting.
Especially improved Bluetooth support will make a noticable difference for many users.
Canāt wait to try my Bluetooth mouse with Haiku that I couldnāt use for many years.
Welcome studens!
Work hard, have fun! 
Congrats on the 3 selected students, for the others not selected this time, better luck next year, stick around, itās worth it! 
On the bleutooth note, looking forward on a path that we could try out some ports on this. 
Hello! Thanks for the warm welcome and support. 
I hope to live up to your expectations and bring the Bluetooth stack to life.
Itās not going to happen without more people replying to the mentor call, reviewing the proposals and registering themselves to mentor a student.
By the way, tnahks to KepiX who will be mentoring for the first time this year!
I indeed hope to see more mentors and interest from the active developers in future GSoC editions. Personally I would be happy to take a break from it from time to time, knowing that there are other people who can do the mentoring.
Thanks everyone, looking forward to a productive GSoC!
How does mentoring work exactly?
How much experience with the Haiku codebase or C++ in general does one need to have to qualify?
How much time does it take,how fast is a mentor expected to reply?
And does āregisteringā mean getting in touch with Google,or is it a Haiku-internal thing?
Sorry if Iām missing any obvious documentation page,but I canāt find any explanation how it works on the Haiku website.
Iād be happy to help people with their first steps at Haiku development,but Iām not really an expert too.
Also,I work full-time and can not respond during work,only on the weekend (but then Iām usually available the whole day) and at evenings,so that may be a problem.
Oh,and Iām proudly living free of Big Tech for many years,so if mentoring requires me to register with Google,thatās not for me.
Officially mentoring requires registering on the GSoC website, which requires a Google account.
Thatās just for registration, and creating a throwaway account just for this is fine (and it is what some of the mentors do or did).
It also requires being able to spend some time replying to the GSoC participants.
How much time really depends on the participants, some can work alone for a day or a week without much problems, others will require a lot more handholding.
Thereās nothing more than the usual work of reviewing patches, replying to question on the forum, maybe forwarding the questions to people who may know better about specific topics. The idea is just to help people navigate Haiku and how to contribute.
Besides that, the main task is filling in evaluations twice during the summer (usually late june and late august) to make sure the project is going along as planned.
I think really the main part of the work is during the application period: welcoming the students, helping them writetheir proposals, and then review these proposals to rank them and decide who we accept.
Finally, I should mention that there is a Google-free alternative to GSoC called Outreachy, that is run by the software freedom conservancy. Unfortunately, it also comes without Googleās money, and so participating requires paying the studentās stipend ourselves, or finding another corporate sponsor to do that part. Unfortunately we donāt have a corporate sponsor willing to pay $6000 a year for this, and even if we had, maybe we would consider spending that money in other ways.
Congratulations and welcome to the 3 students! Happy hacking on Haiku and hope to see some nice new features
Thanks for the detailled explanation.
Officially mentoring isnāt for me then,but answering forum questions is something Iām already doing.
Maybe I can help more with writing/reviewing the proposals next year.
Iāve never heard of Outreachy before,but found it when I was looking for documentation how mentoring works on the Haiku website.
The fact that we have to pay $6000 for each student makes that a not so great option,unfortunately.
Ahoy lucky applicants ! Ahoy generous contributors !
Just as I highly regarded applications of every students who arised here, on Haiku forum,
for their choice to select Haiku to complete our beloved project and the entire environment
with really exciting features and areas ā¦
ā¦ I highly praised you ā¦ really to all of you ā¦ for your perseverance adjusting/filling up the GSoC form ā however it was not sure how many and who will be selected for this year finally.
Me also wants to thank you very much for all your efforts who were not selected at this time ā¦ especially as to those applicants who already contributed by written/merged patches for Haiku codebase.
I hope you may find enough excitement to continue these educational sessions without Googleās payment ā but I can understand and accept if those volumes needed for your personal education/improvement or family budget needs, so you rather pursue another way to fund that goal than write code without compensation. However if you are free to do it anyway -
The BeOS spirit
Living on in Haiku now
Welcome to your box
For the new contributors under ā#GSoC2026ā ā¦
I remember seeing a mentor call on the mailing list for 2025, but that year I was too busy to do anything other than university coursework.
For 2026 I was checking if there was any call for GSoC mentors, but I donāt recall seeing any. I thought Haiku already had enough volunteersā¦
If I qualify, and if there is still demand next year in the ports/libroot/kernel area, please count me in.
I sent a mail to haiku-development mailing list and the private past mentors list in january. I forgot to send it to the public haiku-gsoc mailing list.
Iām not sure if I also did a forum post at the time, maybe I should next time.
Iām myself a bit overwhelmed with all Haiku and other responsibilities, maybe Iām not doing the best job with the communication there.
You did a great job, even as a non developers I saw the emails and IIRC a call for mentors here on the forum also.
If you want a pat on the back, here it comes. You do a tremendous job! Juggling everything you do is an amazing talent. Add your programming skills ā¦ awesome!
I agree with the others here,you really do a great job at keeping everyone informed about the news that matter.
I always enjoy reading your posts about the work being done and whatās still needed.
Posted on fediverse, since I didnāt see some fancy image to go with the post I added a writen image from the above post (peeps like images) to gain some attention.
Donāt shoot me for the bad image though 
Hi Begasus, even de taalpurist uithangenā, maar het meervoud van mouse is mice.
Not necessarily. āMiceā is always used for little furry rodents, but for computer pointing devices, āmousesā can also be used. Itās less common and starting to sound old-fashioned, but so are we!
https://www.grammarpalette.com/mouses-vs-mice-whats-the-correct-plural/
