As the world is moving towards a connected society. The communities driving the development of open source technologies are becoming more prominent. Numerous software giants like Google and Microsoft are embracing the idea of Open Source Software. With Microsoft's Campaign: “ Microsoft ❤️ Open Source ”, the importance of open source is visible to the world. For example, Tensorflow and Pytorch are 2 very important Machine learning libraries that heavily govern the advancements in Artificial Intelligence today, both of these are driven and developed by open source communities in collaboration with corporate firms. With the importance of Open Source made crystal clear. There is one problem that needs to be addressed: Connecting people with Open Source Communities. The idea of OpenLake is to act as a bridge between Students and the World of Open Source Development.

This independent entity will be a place to have discussions on open source communities. The entity will encourage and help students to become a part of open source initiatives like Google Summer of Code, Outreachy etc. At a later stage, the students who have worked in open source organisations may encourage other students to join them. Ensuring a steady flow of human resources to these communities. There will be fairs where students can talk about the work they did for the FOSS (Free Open Source Software) communities and add more people to the organisations they are part of.

There will be a set of individuals who will act as mentors and ensure that the events related to OpenLake happen periodically. Currently, individuals who have had their pull requests merged into reputed Open Source Organisation will be eligible to be mentors.