Add Google Summer of Code Working Group charter.

[tim-schilling]

This is a first draft of the charter. I tried to keep it inline with current efforts. I expect as the WG forms and iterates, it will be more ambitious and the scope will change.

cc: @DevilsAutumn @Apoorvgarg-creator

[nanorepublica]

@tim-schilling a question popped into my header while reading your year in review.

Are some of the working groups/teams meant to report to just the Steering Council or is the board always included?

I ask this here as it would seem from an outside perspective GSoC is more technical in nature over requiring much from the board?

[tim-schilling]

From my understanding / perspective it is a and/or situation depending on the use case. GSoC and Djangonaut Space (if you think of it as a contributor WG) both are relevant to the technical aspect of Django. However, more of them are about community building which is the Board's purview.

So I think GSoC would report to the board, but would need a SC liaison for helping with project selection. Though that's not a strong preference.

[nanorepublica]

That makes sense. More broadly is there a case to be made for some WG's to only have a SC liaison and no board liaison?

[tim-schilling]

Yes. I'd imagine if we had a dedicated team for handling the new-features repo (no plans atm), that'd be entirely in the SC's domain. Or a dedicated team that managed a particular component.

Concretely, the mergers, releases, triage and review teams, likely all will be SC domain rather than board domain.

[DevilsAutumn]

Looks good to me, thanks for putting this together @tim-schilling !

[tim-schilling]

@knyghty I think this is good for review and potentially the boards if you don't spot any major issues.

[jefftriplett]

TODO get a board liaison

[wsvincent]

Really good stuff here! I would just add to please continue to post blog updates on djangoproject.com and encourage both mentors and students to also blog as much as possible so that we can share on Django News and the broader community is aware of all the work happening here.

[nanorepublica]

Question: Would asking past mentors make sense here?

Also would it make sense to say each year's mentors are included for the period they are a mentor?

[DevilsAutumn]

I don't think it makes sense to add each year's mentors for the the period they are mentor, as member of the working group. From my understanding, This working group is more of a body that makes sure that GSoC is well organized year after year.
Yes, we can ask current and prior mentors if they are interested to become a part. But before that we need to be clear about the roles and responsibilities of the members.

[nanorepublica]

Make sense! I think I'm confusing my role as mentor and OCWG chair!

[tim-schilling]

@wsvincent that's definitely something we're hoping to do with this WG. Right now the team is just Apoorv and Bhuvnesh and they are focused on kicking off 2026. The plan is to build some documentation along with resuable communications to make Django's participation easier from year to year.

[tim-schilling]

Note to self: Make sure they can be ping-able across platforms so people can easily communicate with them. It's hard to know who to talk to for GSoC.

[nanorepublica]

Just a couple of ideas from me:

1. We could encourage potential applicants that reviewing code is more valued over producing code. AI usage would still be a challenge. On a wider scale, a subset criteria used for DSF members could be applicable to applicants as well (at least from my understanding)
2. In terms of potential projects, we have at least a few in the OCWG that might be ready for next year or even beyond.

[tim-schilling]

@nanorepublica can you review this section? It makes some asks that I think the online community WG will have to implement. The email is likely an Ops thing.

[nanorepublica]

That looks good to me. Once the group is active someone just needs to raise an issue (like you did with django-commons) on our repo so we can easily track the work.