As you may have already seen, Mozilla is not in the list of organizations accepted for Google Summer of Code 2015.

People who have observed the list carefully may have noticed that there are fewer accepted organizations this year: 137 (down from 190 in 2014 and 177 in 2013). Other organizations that have participated successfully several times are also not in the 2015 list (eg. Linux Foundation, Tor, ...).

After a quick email exchange with Google last night, here is the additional information I have:
  • not accepting Mozilla was a difficult decision for them. It is not the result of a mistake on our part or an accident on their side.
  • there's an assumption that not participating for one year would not be as damaging for us as it would be for some other organizations, due to us having already participated many times.
  • this event doesn't affect negatively our chances of being selected next year, and we are encouraged to apply again.

This news has been a surprise for me. I am disappointed, and I'm sure lots of people reading this are disappointed too. I would like to thank all the people who considered participating this year with Mozilla, and especially all the Mozillians who volunteered to mentor and contributed great project ideas. I would also like to remind students that while Summer of Code is a great opportunity to contribute to Mozilla, it's not the only one. Feel free to contact mentors if you would like to work on some of the suggested ideas anyway.

Let's try again next year!