20+ Open Source Internship Programs (Updated for 2023)

Contributing to open source is one of the best ways to gain skills and build your resume as a student or a new developer.

As open source becomes the norm, more and more tech companies are investing in open source projects and internship programs.

These programs often offer interns a mentorship opportunity and a stable stipend so that they can invest their time to work on these projects.

This article contains all the details of these programs. You can skip to the summary for quick access to all these resources.

Google Summer of Code (GSoC)

This is one of the most popular programs with 700+ participating organizations. The program is organized by Google and each year mentees identify projects and submit proposals to work on them. Accepted mentees are assigned a mentor by the participating organization and students spend their summer working with them.

As of 2022, anyone above the age of 18 can participate in GSoC.

For 2023, mentees and organizations can choose the project time and project length based on their ability to commit. Read the announcement blog for more details.

Linux Foundation Mentorship Program (LFX)

This program is organized by The Linux Foundation and aims to pair open source talent with experienced mentors. The students identify a project and create a profile to submit an application. Mentees can apply to 3 projects at a time.

MLH Fellowship

This program will provide you the opportunity to contribute to the type of open source projects that every company depends on.

There are also non-open source programs that MLH offers. See fellowship.mlh.io/#programs.

Google Season of Docs (GSoD)

This program gives technical writers an opportunity to gain experience in open source.

If you are interested in contributing to documentation, this is a really good opportunity to work on some interesting projects.

Outreachy

Outreachy is a diversity initiative that provides paid, remote internships to people subject to systemic bias and impacted by underrepresentation in the technical industry where they are living.

Season of KDE

This program offers an opportunity for people to participate in both code and non-code projects that benefits the KDE ecosystem.

Free Software Foundation (FSF) Internship

This program provides an opportunity to work closely with the FSF staff members in your area of interest, such as campaign and community organizing, free software licensing, systems and network administration, GNU Project support, or Web development.

Linux Kernel Mentorship Program

This program from The Linux Foundation connects experienced Linux Kernel developers and maintainers with mentees to help the become contributors to the Linux Kernel.

The program serves as a vehicle to reach out to students and developers to inject new talent into the Linux Kernel community. It aims to increase diversity in the Linux Kernel community and work towards making the kernel more secure and sustainable. We strongly encourage applicants who are from traditionally underrepresented or marginalized groups in the technology and open source communities, including, but not limited to: persons identifying as LGBTQ, women, persons of color, and/or persons with disabilities.

Linux Foundation Networking (LFN) Mentorship Program

This program - also from The Linux Foundation - aims to provide opportunity to gain exposure to LFN’s projects and technical communities.

The mentors in this program are active developers and technologists contributing to the industry’s leading open source networking projects such as ONAP, OPNFV, OpenDaylight, FD.io.

GNOME Summer of Code

This is provided through GSoC to help underrepresented groups in free and open source software to get involved with GNOME projects.

Alibaba Summer of Code

Students will receive mentorship from the Alibaba team to work on a series of open source projects.

FOSSASIA Codeheat

This is a coding contest for FOSSASIA projects on GitHub and a jury wil choose winners from the top 10 contributors based on the code quality and the relevance of the commits.

FOSSASIA Internship Program

In the program we are looking for people who would like to work on the project they choose continuously. Different to GSoC in the internship it is not only about a specific project proposal. We rather look for participants who are interested to advance the project and solve bugs or add features that are required to bring the project forward.

Open Summer of Code

This program will coach the students into working in different open innovation projects provided by partnering organizations, companies and governments.

Open Mainframe Project Mentorship Program

This program would help the mentee to expand their knowledge of mainframe technology and would help them contribute to open source projects that make it easier for infrastructure applications to run on mainframe.

CNCF Mentoring Initiatives

Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) offers a vibrant community of projects and offers internships throughout the year through different mentoring programs.

X.Org Endless Vacation of Code (EVoC)

The EVoC program was initiated to help support more projects that would otherwise go rejected through GSoC. Students are welcome to either come up with an idea on their own or work up a proposal for an idea suggested by someone else.

Hyperledger Mentorship Program

This program provides a structured and hands-on opportunity for students and new developers gain exposure to Hyperledger open source development and entry to the technical community.

Julia Seasons of Contributions (JSoC)

A set of seasonal programs for funding or mentoring students and other developers to contribute to the Julia open source ecosystem.

Summer of Haskell

This program is an effort by Haskell.Org to reach out to students and encourage them to contribute to the Haskell community with the aid of experienced mentors.

24 Pull Requests

As the name suggests, this program encourages new contributors to make 24 pull requests in the month of December. This is a very beginner friendly program.

Summary

Here is the entire article summarized into a table: