We’re pleased to announce, Ruby on Rails has been accepted into Google Summer of Code 2013 as a mentoring organization. What does this mean to you? Potentially, if you’re the right person, you can get paid to work on Rails this summer! The “right person” in this case is one who is at least 18 years old (sorry, Google’s rule, not ours!) on or before May 27, 2013; a full or part-time college student; and passionate about improving Rails.

We’re building a potential list of project ideas on a GitHub wiki, but we welcome other interesting proposals. If your proposal gets accepted, Google will pay you $5000 over the course of three months to work on the code. If you’re interested, head over to the GSoC site and start reading about the process. Student applications can be submitted starting April 22 and the deadline is May 3.

If you’re wondering what’s involved in becoming a GSoC student then the Google Student Guide has all the details on what’s expected and what you will gain from taking part. Any further questions can be directed either to the mailing list or to me directly.

What if you’re not a student? You can still help out by discussing ideas on the special mailing list we’ve setup for this year’s program. Or if you’ve got previous experience of contributing to Rails and are ready to make a strong commitment to help out the next generation of developers, you can apply to be a mentor.

We’re looking forward to working with this year’s students, and expecting some outstanding contributions to Rails as a result!