So at least in 2005, it was the Open Source project that picked which applicants to fill their slots with. My only exposure to SoC is this year, so it sounds l

So at least in 2005, it was the Open Source project that picked which applicants to fill their slots with. My only exposure to SoC is this year, so it sounds like the process has changed. Currently, the "mentoring organization" has to be accepted by Google (not sure why really), but after that, each student proposal also gets scrutinized by Google as well -- I guess it's how they keep all those new hires busy ;) But it does seem to me like established Open Source projects can pretty easily get slots for SoC. That's probably true, though I did hear anecdotal evidence about a large number of Apache projects not getting funded for whatever reason -- it's surprising, since you would think that Apache in particular would be important to them, unless they're already beyond using Apache themselves.