The advantages of selecting a FOSS project:

• After deciding to select a FOSS project, the immediate advantage of the student is that he/she gets a wide variety of projects to work on and he/she can easily select the one which relates to their field of interest.
   
• Even if you don't have the requisite technical skills, you can learn a lot by attending the pre-project training program.
  
  
• Contributing to already existing Free Software project helps the student as he gets a very good user base of the project along with the developers of the project.

• There are a wide variety of real-life problems waiting to be solved with Free / Open Source Software. Working on a FOSS project is one the most productive ways of solving problems as well as learning new skills.
  

• Contributing to Free Software projects exposes you to the Free Software community and way that volunteers and committed contributors work together.
  
  
• The fact that your project is licensed under a Free Software license helps you freely present your project anywhere you need to display it.
  
  
• There is no better way to put forth your technical expertise in Free Software than to say that you worked on a such a project, released it (give a URL for your source code) and X number of people downloaded it, used it and gave you feedback about it.