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Google Launches Summer of Code

Posted by Zonk on from the better-than-the-summer-of-love dept.

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!"

6 of 376 comments (clear)

  1. Re:ZzzZZZz by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I thought Slashdot readers would be interested WRONG!!

    Hold on a moment. They are offering Slashdotters money to program open source! How is that not right up the alley of "News for Nerds" and "Stuff that Matters?"

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  2. Re:Why just students? by natrius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The one question I have is this: Why just students?

    If you open it up to everyone, it's harder to tell if the person will get the intended benefit out of it: education. Experienced coders could participate just for the money. The program isn't supposed to be mainly about the money, it's just there to get college students' eyes on developing open source software as an option.

  3. Spectacular by spludge · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is spectacular. I mean talk about giving back to the community. I wish that google would pay the students on a bi-weekly basis though. When I was a student I would have leaped at this opportunity, but the lack of a stream of cash would have made it extremely difficult to take.

    It is more of a motivator to give the cash in one lump sum at the end of the summer, and it reduces the possibility for fraud, but many students need cash to scrape by.

    Anyways, go google, I hope these 200 student developers do amazing things over this summer!

  4. Re:Slashdot becomes a shill for google by damiam · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A shill for Google? If any other company were putting up close to a million dollars in bounty money for open-source development, it'd be huge news. Hell, Novell offered $25000 in GNOME bounties a year ago and we got at least two separate /. stories about it. This is exactly the sort of news for nerds that /. exists to report (as are, incidently, both of the other Google stories on the FP). Should /. just start rejecting all stories pertaining to Google, just because Google is working on a lot of cool stuff?

    --
    It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
  5. Re:Suppose you have a brilliant idea by chrisd · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Apply. Sounds cool. Put lots of details in the application.

    Chris

    --
    Co-Editor, Open Sources
    Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
  6. Re:Why just students? by pmc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Again, Google is following the simple rule of Don't make it a hassle for your customers to do business with you. Google's advertisements are the best out there that I've seen. They don't try to jump out at you, they don't annoy you with flashing pictures or insipid audio, and a real attempt is made to make the advertisements relevant to the person viewing them.

    You appear to be under a misapprehension that you are a customer of google because you view their ads- you're not. You are their product. Their customers are the people that buy the ads.