An open source project I am involved with had the same experience. We were expecting to get idealistic young people as students who had a passion for the proje

An open source project I am involved with had the same experience. We were expecting to get idealistic young people as students who had a passion for the project. Instead, we got people from poor countries who were doing it for the money and didn't care about the project at all. I understand that this money may do some good and I don't blame the students for going for it, but it really tainted the whole process in my mind. GSoC also has this this weird master/slave (or if you like, employer/employee) dynamic that is very artificial. If you are a mentor, you are basically a manager for the student. You have to give status reports, feedback, evaluate how they are doing, decide whether to pass or fail them at the end, and so forth. It's very different from how a real open source project operates. If you want to know what being a middle manager operating an outsourced project feels like, then being a GSoC mentor is for you. If that is something you would run screaming from, then I would stay away.