Info post about updates in GSoC processes

Author: dpshelio

_posts/2026-06-01-GSoC-rules.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Google Summer of Code, open proposals and claims of plagiarism"
+date: 2026-06-01
+---
+
+This is our 10th anniversary participating in [GSoC](https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/) as Open Astronomy,
+and a few more years for us, the org-admins, who have been taking part under the [Python Software Foundation](https://python-gsoc.org/)
+umbrella before OA was formed.
+
+This year was the first one we've enforced the open proposal system for all the sub-organisations involved under our umbrella.
+We did it as a mechanism to avoid LLM slop and to make it as transparent as possible for all the participants, after all,
+[SunPy had been using this approach since 2013](https://github.com/sunpy/sunpy/wiki/Google-Summer-of-Code#editions) without any problems.
+
+This time, however, after the selections were announced we got a message from GSoC admins about a complaint involving plagiarism between proposals.
+We've spent a whole week analysing the situation involving all of the three OA organisation admins, the lead mentor of the project involved, 
+and GSoC admins.
+Below, we detail some lessons learnt about this situation to help avoid this happening in the future.
+
+1. Inspiration or plagiarism.
+   Using an open proposal approach (and mostly now in the age of LLMs),
+   it's not surprising to find that people may get inspiration from others when trying to propose a solution to a problem.
+   And, that's OK\! What's however unethical is to not attribute where the idea comes from, whether from discussing with mentors,
+   from a chat with others, or cooked up by an LLM.
+   As an organisation that is based on Research Software that supports researchers, this is a serious issue.
+   This will be clearly highlighted on our template for future editions.
+
+2. Evaluation.
+   The evaluation of the candidates never have been solely based on the proposals.
+   In fact, the proposal document itself is the least important part of the application.
+   We need that to document the work plan and your background and availability but nothing more.
+   After all the details of the work, in the ideal case, is the result of a collaboration with mentors and other contributors of the hosting project.
+   We've got that as [the first point of our guidelines: The better we know you, the better we can judge your application](https://openastronomy.org/gsoc/contributor_guidelines.html).
+   This means that besides having a good proposal and demonstrating its understanding (through an interview),
+   everything such as: How the candidates interact with the community, answer to feedback, welcome and help other candidates to get started, and much more, counts\!
+   GSoC is not a competition or an internship/job, GSoC is a programme to build community and develop future maintainers.
+   This is already mentioned in our guidelines, but we will make sure it is more specific.
+
+3. Gaming the system?
+   This year was the first time we used github pull requests as a method to publish the proposals openly.
+   And for the first time, we found multiple interpretations to the rules we set.
+   From opening an empty pull-request before the deadline and not sharing the content until just after, to uploading all the proposals in a single commit.
+   There were also cases of using `pdf` rather than `md` files or grouping multiple proposals in a single pull-request.
+   The other purpose of open proposals, is to follow the [open development approach that is followed by our organisations (second point of our principles)](https://openastronomy.org/#principles-of-openastronomy).
+   As with software, the candidates are expected to work in the open,
+   show the evolution of their proposals in multiple commits and iterating on their draft as it gets to a complete status.
+   Ideally, even with time enough to get feedback from the community (not just the mentors).
+   This also helps to show who comes with original approaches and avoids having to find out whether some ideas were shared before on different channels.
+   This time, we are going to assume that the purpose and instructions weren't made clear, but it won't be the case in future editions.
+   Single commit applications will be ignored, at the deadline all the PRs will be merged and no further modifications will be considered,
+   and applications that do not use the template format will be excluded.