Google Launches Summer of Code

chrisd writes "We're very happy to launch the Summer of Code today, and I thought Slashdot readers would be interested and might even help us spread the word (We have a flyer, even). The program is designed to give computer science, and other, students a stipend ($4500) while they learn to release and create open source software. We're working with a variety of Open Source software foundations and organizations and we hope to sign up around 200 developers. We hope the end result will be more open source developers! I'll be pleased to answer questions in the comment stream about this program. Thanks!"

Comments

Re:Why just students?

[chrisd]

From the faq:

Who is eligible?

Students. Since the point of the program is to create new developers, we're looking to find developers around the world who have considered creating free and open source software but who have not yet taken the plunge. We felt that concentrating on the student population was a good place to focus these efforts.

Not from the faq:

Basically, You gotta start somewhere.

Chris

Re:which is it?

[chrisd]

Crud. Thanks. It's the 14th. Updating the site now.

Chris

Re:Direction

[chrisd]

We welcome those groups, but we had a limited amount of time to corral everyone. They can still join in. This is why we posted the mentorship faq on the site.

Man, the 2 minute posting restriction is killing me today.

Chris

Re:Country Eligibility

[gstein]

Any student from any country.

(except for those countries the US State Department forbids us from working with... the "terrorist" countries)

So yeah... Canadians are welcome! :-)

Please read the mentorship faq...

[chrisd]

We didn't choose actually, we had to round up the groups who wanted to do this. The ones you see were the most interested. We didn't turn any groups away that offered up what we needed to make the program successful. Don't read anything into that list.

I'd love to add the KDE league.

Chris

Re:Some questions

[chrisd]

Yes on both.

Chris