Drupal NOT Accepted into Google Summer of Code 2021

Sad to report that Drupal will NOT be participating in Google Summer of Code 2021. It is fair to update the community on how/why this happened and how we can prevent it from happening in the future?

Did you know the Drupal Association requested that I no longer participate in Google Summer of Code? Apparently the Drupal Association decided for the community that Rachel Lawson (paid employee of the DA) become the GSoC "organization admin".

This is a bit strange because Rachel has never participated in Google Summer of Code as a student, mentor, org admin, or at any level. We requested that Rachel first participate in the program as a mentor to learn how the program works. However, rather than collaborating with our existing team that has completed several years of both GSoC and GCI, we saw the total opposite. It appears that Rachel, the Drupal Association, and their related government, decided to take over the program and move forward without any input.

Hours prior to GSoC's org application deadline, all of my admin access was removed on drupal.org. Example, as you can see previous org admins remain with rachel_norfolk as a group organizer of a group she has never participated in. This leads to a real question...how does the Drupal Association have permission to change groups, change authors on posts, delete posts/comments, and even more questionable activity?? Example, why was my user removed and user rachel_norfolk replaced as the Google Code-In group organizer on drupal.org when the program was canceled by Google over a year ago? Why would the Drupal Association contact the GSoC program organizers to have program rules changed back in October without notifying anyone from Drupal's GSoC/GCI community?

Why was Drupal not accepted into GSoC 2021? As a person who has successfully submitted almost a decades worth of GSoC/GCI applications for Drupal, I can tell you very easily. There was no community promotion or "call for mentors". In fact, Rachel didn't even start working on the application or updating anything on drupal.org until hours prior the GSoC application deadline. You should know that the application is simple to fill out but actually takes weeks/months of planning to be successful. Example, in January, there should be a "call for mentors" and a big push to cat herd mentors with projects ideas. Usually the DA posts on social about this, but not this year? The "GSoC Project List" with a "list of mentors" is the most important piece of GSoC application. As usual, I started a GSoC 2021 project list as soon as GSoC 2020 ended. However, I was asked not to participate, the node I created was deleted, Rachel created her own, but it was a copy of 2020's idea list. Then Rachel asked me to remove the few ideas on the page we had because I was listed as mentor. In a GSoC project application, a project list with only a couple recycled projects from previous years is a major red flag and reason Drupal was not accepted. Sure Google will mention they wanted to accept new organizations this year, but that is simply a polite way of saying "sorry, try again next year".

As a Drupal community we need to ask a few question. Example, why is donated money to the Drupal Association being used to fund paid employees to accomplish the task of damaging the Drupal community? We already had a team of volunteers with a perfectly good system for almost a decade until the DA stepped in with paid employees. Why should Drupal companies continue to fund the Drupal Association if they're ultimately controlling everything that goes on behind the scenes and pushes a software further away from users? If this "paid community liaison position at the Drupal Association" truly represents the Drupal Community, shouldn't the community liaison position be elected by the community and not appointed by the DA? It is important to remember that the Drupal Association != the Drupal Community.

Personally, I'm participating in GSoC via another org and hired real life interns at my business that is maybe 5% Drupal these days. I've volunteered the better part of 2 decades for this community...only to have my contributions erased over night by an association that's supposed to help us. Honestly...this is scary stuff for a "open community".

If you're curious how I became the GSoC org admin, there is a blurb about it in the community spotlight written about me @ https://www.drupal.org/forum/general/community-spotlight/2016-06-07/matt... -- important to note there was multiple meetings with GSoC alumni, org admins, and the Drupal Association who helped select myself as org admin.

My plan has always been for the "innovation cycle of GSoC". Every year we had more students becoming mentors who helped new students. Then we had mentors become org admins. It was my goal to hand over the org admin responsibility to one of these people, not a paid employee who the Drupal Association who has never even participated in GSoC. Example, gvso started out as a GCI student in high school. gvso won GCI and couldn't participate in GSoC because he was still in high school...so he became a GSoC mentor. Obviously gvso became a GSoC student and built the Social API which is a major project in the Drupal community plus GSoC/GCI. gvso moved up the ladder and became a GSoC and GCI mentor. However, the most helpful gvso has been was as an org admin. Skyredwang has helped as GSoC/GCI org admin for years too. These are the people who should be GSoC org admins. The least Rachel or the DA could have done was ask any of us questions on how GSoC works or how to submit a proper application...nope...the DA is going to do things their way without community input and have 0 qualms changing the past for their future.

*Disclaimer. This is not a personal issue with Rachel. This is simply an update for the community. So...please...CWG...DA...or whatever else you invented...please do not see this anything negative about Rachel. She seems like a nice person. As a community, we simply need to figure out how to move forward. I truly wish the best of luck to everyone involved because the real people missing here are the students.

As a community...how do we prevent the Drupal Association from gate-keeping the Drupal community from participating in anything...especially Google Summer of Code! Where was any discussion on drupal.org about this? Or will the Drupal Association continue making decisions for the Drupal Community...?