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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!"

15 of 376 comments (clear)

  1. Why just students? by interstellar_donkey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think it's wonderful Google is doing something like this. Then again, I don't think Google has done much that could be considered wrong as of late. There are two good rules of business that so many modern industries seem to forget. 1) Make a good product, which so far Google seems to be doing well, and 2) Don't make it a hassle for your customers to do business with you. If only other tech companies followed those two simple rules, they probably would be faring much better. If the recording industry followed these rules, they would . . . well, that's not going to happen any time soon.

    The one question I have is this: Why just students? Sure, it's always good to help out students (especially with money), but there are a lot of people out there who are doing this stuff on their own. You don't have to be in school to be trying to learn coding or work in open source (some of us do it as a hobby). This really isn't meant to be a complaint, it's a serious question, and I'm sure there is a good answer out there I just don't happen to know what it is.

    --
    The Internet is generally stupid
    1. Re:Why just students? by tool462 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Money given as a stipend for students is likely tax deductible. Money given to a random Amateur Joe Programmer likely isn't.

    2. Re:Why just students? by capt.Hij · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How do you define a "student." I didn't see it in the FAQ. Do you have to be enrolled in an accredited program as a full time student? Can I take a class at the local community college and call myself a student?

    3. Re:Why just students? by Pantero+Blanco · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If whether the applicant is a student next semester depends on a scholarship that they may or may not get over the Summer, are they still eligible?

    4. Re:Why just students? by interstellar_donkey · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Of course a company should be able to make money, and that's hard to do when the major services are provided for "free". So far, the best known (legitimate) way to make money from an otherwise "free" service is advertising.

      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.

      I know personally I've clicked on more of these non obtrusive, non abrasive and (mostly) relevant ads in Gmail in the last three months then all the total ads I've clicked on since I first started seeing them around 93/94. (Not saying much, since I've clicked on non-Google ads three times in the past decade, and Google ads four times, but I think you see my point).

      For those of you who pooh-paw what you see as "idol-worship" with Google, let me explain something: If a company is doing everything right, people are going to like that company. So far there is very little that Google has done that's "wrong". They have built a reputation, and continue to build a reputation of being "one of the good ones".

      If they stay that course, I think in the long run there's a company that's going to end up the first "blue chip" dot-com, lasting for decades. That doesn't mean they can do no wrong; if they start producing low quality products or pissing off their customers, they can start going down hill fast. It could be argued that this is what happened to Netscape in the late 90s when they were bought out. New management screwed with the employees, so many of the good ones quit. Their main product went way down hill, and now they're doing their best . . . as a company to recover from that (don't know if that's going to happen). It could happen to Google too, if they don't stay their current course.

      --
      The Internet is generally stupid
    5. Re:Why just students? by Maximum+Prophet · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Au contraire. Some companies like UPS think only the paying entity paying is their customer. Contrast this with FedEx where both the shipper and shippee are treated well.
      Google would do very well to make sure that both parties in the tranaction, the Ad buyer and the Ad viewer are happy. If the ad viewers go away, so do the ad buyers.
      Google could do worse than to emulate FedEx, even though UPS is more like the MicroSoft of the shipping business.

      --
      All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
  2. Open source by The+Bungi · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Google just recently started giving lip service to open source, after some people noticed they had really given nothing back to the Movement given that their infrastructure is largely built on free software (or open source or whatever it's called this week).

    What's the point of this, really? Why is Google suddenly so interested in fostering open source? And why only students? More pliable to the idea of giving your work away?

  3. I'm a college student by herrvinny · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And I am definitely going to enter, as soon as I have a suitable idea. To hell with the money (although it is nice, I'll probably buy a Xbox 360 + games with it), I'd do it just for the chance to have "Google Project Assistant/Implementor" on my resume. Although, a bigger list of organizations would be nice. I hope more open source organizations jump in.

  4. Direction by miyako · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This looks like a really interesting project. I've often wanted to get into open source development, but the most I've done is to submit a minor bugfix to a project. What seems nice about this project is that it gives some direction on how to get started. I think the idea of hooking a student up with experienced developers also adds to this direction. The problem I've found when trying to contribute to open source software is that few people seem willing to help you get started.
    I'm definitely thinking of applying, but why GNOME and the perl foundry but no KDE or Java Foundry? never been fond of Perl or GTK+ myself, and I don't know anything about Python or .NET so my options are kind of limited :(

    --
    Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
  5. Suppose you have a brilliant idea by Hektor_Troy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You've even worked on it a bit during your comp.sci. classes, but it's not done, nor is it quite working.

    Where would you submit something like that?

    I ask because along with a friend, I have been working on what we believe to be a highly innovative application for a neural network, that - if we can get it working - you will definately love to have.

    Problem is two-fold:
    1) It's in the proof-of-concept stage, and our first attempt failed to even be a proof. We think this was due to crappy data to start with
    2) It's not something that fits naturally into any of the mentioned organizations. The closest is Apache, but that's purely because they have a ton of Java-applications already.

    The most "natural" organization for our idea, would probably be Google itself.

    So what should we do?

    --
    We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
  6. Re:Missing option by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Technically, since slash is open source, then couldn't Taco etc become mentors for the next generation?

    Now theres a scary thought if I ever I had one.

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    liqbase :: faster than paper
  7. Re:*and* a free t-shirt! by Duncan3 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Good thing for that T-shirt, becasue at 4500/summer, that's about $865/hr (assuming only 40hr/week for 13 weeks). After self-employment taxes, you're better off in a McJob.

    Of course, if you live in India or China, that's a fortune. But I'd say any US college student should be able to do MUCH better interning.

    --
    - Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
  8. Re:Doesn't look so fun to me by gstein · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No no no...

    We didn't make this clear enough. Those are merely ideas. Come up with anything you want and write a proposal!

    Feel like adding some new, cool feature to an existing OSS project? Fine. Want to write a plugin for a project? Fine.

    It is limited only by your creativity. We asked the organizations to produce some lists to spur people's imaginations. Not to limit them to just those projects!

  9. Suggestions? by corpsiclex · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I often find myself in the mood to tackle some problem (apart from work), but there are times when I just don't know what people need! It would be great if there were some sort of website where people could make requests to the open-source community. In the mean time, does anyone have any suggestions for participants in the Summer of Code?

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    eBayDig 1s a typo saerch engien
  10. Some questions by bigberk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Are graduate students considered eligible students? (e.g. summer between completed undergraduate degree and upcoming Master's program). Yes, I need money.

    Is a programmer eligible for this if they already have been developing open source software? In other words, they already have experience working with OSS projects and producing public code.