Summer of Nix is a coordinated effort to support selected free and open source software (FOSS) projects, by making them available on NixOS. It is funded by the European Commission's Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative through the NLNet Foundation and the NixOS Foundation.
This northern-hemisphere-summer program is designed for students and early-career professionals. It is an opportunity to:
- Practice disciplined software development with Nix in an organisational setting
- Work with a dedicated team of experienced maintainers
- Contribute to the public good and receive some payment for it
Participation in Summer of Nix can also be a pathway to attractive jobs in software development.
Learn more about Nix on nix.dev. Follow NGI0 updates on NixOS Discourse.
The program is intended for participants to work, learn, and meet:
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Improving the deployment story of software projects funded by the NLnet Foundation
Just writing the code is not enough: Programs have to be easy to obtain and run to be widely adopted. Getting complex software to work reliably on a whim is the aspiration for Summer of Nix.
As a participant, you will write Nix derivations, NixOS modules, integration tests, and documentation. And you will solve a lot of tricky problems on the way.
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Skill-sharing among participants
Making computers useful for a mass audience requires diverse skills and broad knowledge, and no one person has it all.
As a participant, you will learn from – and teach – your peers about widely used programming languages, software testing, technical writing, web design, and the Nix ecosystem with its various tools. You will closely collaborate with a mentor and the project team on a regular schedule.
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Growing the Nix community
As a participant, you will be at the heart of a community with more than 900 active contributors. You will engage in an open source software development workflow and take part in public technical discussion.
To be considered for participation, all applicants must demonstrate:
- Fluency in English
- Advanced programming skills, including
- Plain text editing
- The Nix language, the module system, NixOS tests, and related tools
- Programming in Bash
Participant-specific requirements:
- Availability for video calls at least three times per week
- Two sessions with the assigned mentor
- One weekly review with the Nix@NGI team
Mentor-specific requirements:
- Experience in
- Project coordination
- Team leadership
- Capacity to accommodate meetings with all assigned participants
Additionally, applicants have to:
- Meet the system requirements
We are looking for quick learners with a computational mindset. We select for qualification and motivation, and especially appreciate candidates with:
- Ability to troubleshoot software written in any of: C, Rust, Python, PHP, Java, JavaScript
- Non-trivial contributions to Nixpkgs
- Packages maintained in Nixpkgs
- Merge access to Nixpkgs
We also value diverse perspectives and backgrounds. People who identify as members of groups currently underrepresented in open source software development communities are particularly encouraged to apply. We put emphasis on establishing a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment where everyone can contribute their best.
Natural persons of legal age from anywhere in the world can apply.
You must be able to receive payments via one of:
| Role | Base stipend [EUR] |
|---|---|
| Participant | 1875 |
| Mentor | 3125 |
Residents of EU member states receive the base stipend. For residents of other countries, stipends are adjusted according to purchasing power parity relative to the Netherlands. See the list of stipends by country for exact amounts.
Please send the following information over a plain text email, with no attachments, images, nor other embedded elements, to ngi@nixos.org.
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GitHub handle
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Application type (participant or mentor)
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Programming languages and tooling experience
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Notable contributions to the Nix ecosystem
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What do you expect to gain from participating?
Write one or two paragraphs to give us an impression of yourself.
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Time zone and availability
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How did you learn about Summer of Nix?
Be creative! Feel free to add what you deem important for us to know.
Don't worry if your profile doesn't perfectly align with the listed criteria: Showcase your passions and adjacent skills. We appreciate both transferable experience and potential.
Example application
- GitHub handle: @jane-random
- Application type: participant
- Programming languages and tooling experience
(beginner, intermediate, proficient, advanced, expert)
- Nix: advanced
- Bash: advanced
- Rust: intermediate
- Notable contributions to the Nix ecosystem
- Added Keyoxide metadata: https://github.com/ngi-nix/ngipkgs/pull/558
- What do I expect to gain from participating?
- Connect with the community and learn from Nix experts
- Time zone and availability
- Monday to Friday: 09:00—-14:00 CEST
- Wednesday: 15:00--18:00 CEST
- How did I learn about Summer of Nix?
- @joe-random brought it up during one of our discussions
Effective remote collaboration requires being able to simultaneously share your screen, view others' screens, talk to each other, and compile software. This is only possible with sufficiently performant hardware, and therefore it's a condition for participation:
- Video camera
- Headphones and reasonable-quality microphone
- Consistently low-noise environment
- Enough processing power for multiple concurrent video streams
- Sufficient and stable bandwidth throughout multiple hours of video call
From the organisers' experience, mobile data is unlikely to suffice.
Please ask a friend to make a test call on Jitsi Meet and ensure the system requirements are met.
Notifications are posted in the public Matrix room Summer of Nix Announcements. Set up your Matrix client to receive push notifications on new messages.
News about the program are published under the NGI0 subcategory on the NixOS Discourse. Subscribe to receive push notifications or emails on new messages.
It depends. You are responsible for observing the laws that apply to you when receiving payments.
The stipend is compensation for work towards a nonprofit cause. This means that in some jurisdictions it may be exempt from income tax, value-added tax (VAT), or from counting towards social insurance or health insurance obligations.
In some jurisdictions you may have to register a business to legally account for receiving payments.
Note that the stipend amount is exactly what the NixOS Foundation can pay. If you have to process VAT, the gross expense for the NixOS Foundation still must be the stipend amount, even if you put "reverse charge" on the invoice.
No, Summer of Nix is an independent program organised by the NixOS Foundation. It is funded by the European Commission via the NLnet Foundation.
Summer of Nix was originally modeled after Google Summer of Code, but has developed its own profile. We use the purchasing power parity data from Google Summer of Code to calculate our stipends.
We do our best to select free and open source, privacy-respecting software. But this is not a hard constraint, nor the only criterion.
We use:
- GitHub for development and public technical discussion
- Matrix for private, ephemeral, or real-time communication
- Notion for accounting
As a participant, you will need an account on each of these services.
While I was a long-term NixOS user and Nixpkgs maintainer when starting the Summer of Nix 2025 program, my knowledge of the community and inner-workings was limited. The program and its suppport-system allowed me to further embed myself within the community and deepen my knowledge and skills. I am very proud of what we accomplished as a team this summer and all of the (HUGE) progress we made. Throughout the journey, I was able to work with a group of amazing and talented people and get close with them. I'm incredibly thankful to have the privilege to give back to the community and work with others in such a rich way and am excited for the work to come.
- @ethancedwards8, Summer of Nix 2025 participant
I was just a few months into the Nix ecosystem when I began participating in Summer of Nix 2025. This was a great chance for me to learn more about what solutions exist for different programming languages and frameworks, as well as how they work together to make software deployment a better story. Through out the program and NixCon 2025 I've met many capable people with whom I built close relationships, and I consider this is to be equally valuable as the work I did. I'm happy to have a chance to contribute and I'd like to thank everyone for the program and the help they provide along the way.
— @Prince213, Summer of Nix 2025 participant, Nix@NGI member (since November 2025)
I had been a Nixpkgs contributor for about an year when I took part in Summer of Nix, so this was a great opportunity to go a step deeper into the Nix ecosystem. For me more importantly than the technical outcomes of this program, I met some talented and passionate folks from the community, whom I'm still in contact with today. I came to get more involved with Nix, Nixpkgs, NixOS and everything around it, and I didn't expect this to be a foundational stepping stone in my career journey. This does come from the on-paper value of the program, but more so from the latent knowledge gained thanks to my mentors and peers with their experience in a diverse set of fields. I'm lucky to have had a chance to contribute to things that I love, and very grateful for everyone involved in this program being as supportive and caring as they were.
— @GetPsyched, Summer of Nix 2024 participant, release editor for NixOS 24.11
I participated as a mentor in the first two Summers of Nix. This gave me an opportunity to help introduce others to the ecosystem and gain experience leading a globally distributed team. The greatest outcome was the joy of seeing some of the participants stick around and grow to become major contributors. The program is an effective way to create value in open source as well as make the Nix ecosystem stronger, with a focus on the people that make up the community.
— @tomberek, Summer of Nix participant (2021 and 2022), Nix maintainer (since 2022) and Nix Community Steering Committee member (2025)
Open an issue to ask a question in public. Send direct messages for questions that require privacy.
Members of our team will also be available to answer any of your questions directly in the Nix@NGI office hours Jitsi room, every Tuesday and Thursday, 15:00 to 16:00 CET/CEST.
Responsible: Ivan Minčík (program direction)
- GitHub: @imincik
- Matrix: @imincik:matrix.org
- Email: ngi@nixos.org
Accountable: Stichting NixOS Foundation (legal partner in the NGI Zero consortium, fiscal host).
Consulted and informed: Nix Community Steering Committee (governing body of the Nix ecosystem).
- Report: 2025 Summer of Nix
- Report: 2024 Summer of Nix
- Report: 2023 Summer of Nix
- Report: 2022 Summer of Nix
- Report: 2021 Summer of Nix
Summer of Nix is funded by the European Commission's Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative through the NLNet Foundation and the NixOS Foundation.
