Hello,
(Please note that this might be an XY Problem question but written this way to make it brief).
Briefly, I was GSoC24 contributor at Chromium WebXR and I would like to contribute to Swift. Went to search for public projects and the first place that can in my mind was GSoC. So, if I cannot contribute to those projects as a non-gsoc contributor, where can I find other open projects that I can do so?
Please let me know if there is a better place to ask this question.
Thanks in advance,
In theory you could work on these projects... I would suggest waiting until we pick projects that will be active this year and after that you could work on some of the ones which were not picked up maybe? It'd be a waste to duplicate work with an accepted GSoC project -- and we would want to support and make successful the GSoC student of course, which could mean your work not getting used as much or even not merged if "someone else is doing it now" etc.
You can also search github for "good first issue" tagged issues. Those would be great because they're usually small in scope, while gsoc projects can take many weeks to complete.
If you'd like to pick up any of these you can ping here and we can try to find someone to point you in right directions (or just ping on the github issue). 
Thank you so much!
Please help me navigate this. I want to be a long term contributor not just during GSoC. So, I wanted to work on a project that is much larger than GSoC.
As previously mentioned, I am a GSoC24 at Chromium on WebXR. But since the major feature/project was done, there were minor issues that I can work on and there was no maintenance required. I am still trying to find projects at Chromium, but unfortunately I still did not find because these projects are only accessible for Googlers or Microsoft Edge team.
Further more, I agree on many points such as giving opportunities to new open source contributors. Personally, I am helping +200 apply for GSoC this year.
Finally, I am afraid that GSoC projects might have a limited scope and that is one of the reasons of why I wanted a project outside of GSoC.
Sorry for delayed reply as I was thinking of what can I do in my situation.
So much depends on your interests and abilities that I'm afraid nobody can answer that question for you. A good place to start off is the package manager, which is written in Swift and can be built easily like any other Swift package. There are a dozen starter issues listed there, if you just want to try out building it, reading code, and fixing something to get your feet wet.
Most open-source projects do not list large tasks that they want done, and they almost never pay for such work, like google does with GSoC. So if you want to take on a large project for free, the best approach is to scratch your own itch, ie find something you want or need and build it.
Thanks so much for your feedback and suggestions!
In short, I am looking for a mentor who is passionate about their work and can help me discover and learn new topics.
I believe that working on open-source projects is one of the best ways to learn about the software engineering industry. It also provides an excellent opportunity to explore various subfields. For example, during GSoC 2024, I was introduced to VR, Android debugging, and many other areas for the first time. Because of this, I rely on a mentor to guide me toward projects where I can learn new concepts and contribute to real-world applications used by millions and on a real business use-case.
To be extremely specific, I checked Chromium commit tracker to track what interests each company and what are the major parts of the chromium parts. You can check this here (https://chrome-commit-tracker.arthursonzogni.com/organizations/commits/?repositories=angle,chromeos,chromium,clusterfuzz,dawn,devtool-frontend,gn,llvm,pdfium,perfetto,skia,swiftshader,v8,webrtc,wpt&organizations=AMD,ARM,Access+Digital,Adobe,Apple,Azul,FreeBSD,Google,IBM,Igalia,Imagination,Individuals,Intel,LLVM,Linaro,Linux+Foundation,MIPS,Meta,Metrix+Constultants,Microsoft,Mozilla,Nokia,Nvidia,Opera,Redhat,Samsung,SiFive,Sony,University+of+Illinois,Unknown,WebKit&grouping=yearly&colors=repositories&kind=author&chart=bar&dates=2000-01-01,2024-07-10&others). However, most mentors cannot legally disclose these projects and I only have access to public versions (if any), which is mostly provided for GSoC only. Not all GSoC projects can be continued after GSoC and it is disappointing for me since I want to build something and continue maintaining it as well as helping many others get into the open source projects.
Sorry for the long reply and thanks in advance for your time and guidance,
One thing you can try is to look at the list of GSoC ideas both from this year and previous years and see what interests you. Then, check if it was implemented that year and reach out to the listed mentor: see if you can find out more about it if it wasn't implemented, and ask for similar ideas regardless. Everybody is busy and you may not get a response right away or ever, but that should give you an overview of the kind of ideas that people have had.
Go digging in the source and bug tracker for similar topics to those that interested you and you will learn more and find more Swift devs to reach out to. Most people will be too busy to mentor anyone, but someone may spend the time to write you some emails.