> Even if you have students that are already contributing to your project, and just want to allow them to do so full-time during the summer, GSoC is often not worth it.
Having an already-existing contributor sign up for GSoC actually backfired on us. He had to come up with a "project" rather than the minor, drive-by contributions he'd been making (a project which he probably wasn't that excited about, to be honest). He then got behind and didn't finish, and then I guess was embarrassed, as we never heard from him again. So we lost a useful contributor.
Having an already-existing contributor sign up for GSoC actually backfired on us. He had to come up with a "project" rather than the minor, drive-by contributions he'd been making (a project which he probably wasn't that excited about, to be honest). He then got behind and didn't finish, and then I guess was embarrassed, as we never heard from him again. So we lost a useful contributor.