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Google's Summer of Code Over

Posted by Zonk on from the put-down-your-pencils dept.

yootje writes "The Summer of Code ('Google's program designed to introduce students to the world of open source software development.') is now over. The result: 410 participants helping 38 projects suchs as Apache, KDE and FreeBSD. 'Among the project awards are both complex and simple innovations spanning the width and breadth of everything that the open source world has to offer. There are projects dealing with security, networking, VoIP, Java, mono, IP-PBX, online picture galleries, instant messaging and content management. There is even a game that Google's summer internship helped to pay for.'" Update: 09/11 17:15 GMT by Z : Added the story link at submittor's request.

51 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. awesome! by xintegerx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is awesome! There is nothing like the highest worth technology company paying students to work their ass off in the summer to make and improve products and open source software in the name of Google.

    --

    Cover your eyes and click this link!
    1. Re:awesome! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is nothing more than a shot across Microsoft's bow. They are warning them that they are ready to make a big play in open source and also have managed to basically, buy the hearts and minds of nearly every single FOSS developer for merely $2million - an absolute bargain.

      Google still isn't that open source friendly. Sure, they use Linux for servers but that's simply because there is little competition in the market for 100,000 PC 'clusters' with zero license fees.

      Where is Google Desktop Search for Linux? Where is an official Google Talk client for Linux (yes, I know about Jabber, but it doesn't integrate with your gmail contact list)? Where is the Gmail notifier for Linux?

      Until that changes, I don't really think that you can consider Google anything more than an open source user, not a contributor.

      Finally, Google knows that open source is a huge catalyst. For the $5,000/student they paid it would of probably cost Microsoft $50,000+ to do the same work. That basically means that for every million dollars Google puts in, they cost Microsoft $10million. It's a bit like the CIA funding the mujahadeen to fight the soviets, it probably cost them $1 to inflict $10,000 worth of damage onto the soviet economy (eg a $10,000 stinger missile launcher taking down a $10,000,000 helicopter).

    2. Re:awesome! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Google giving $4500 to each student is pretty darn good. When I was in school, it would have paid an awful lot of bills. Also, the projects are all sorts of open source projects...Asterisk, apache, whatever. What are you complaining about?

    3. Re:awesome! by cide1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not to be picky, but $4500 for a summer of work isn't pretty darn good. Most companies factor a summer as 12 weeks * 40 hrs/week = 480 hours. This is $9.37 / hour pretax. If the students were going to do the projects anyways, out of the goodness of their hearts, than this was a nice gesture, but it is not the same as an internship where the pay is normally twice that of google, and an internship which will have mentoring and allow a student to learn a companies culture.

      --
      -- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
    4. Re:awesome! by NetRAVEN5000 · · Score: 5, Interesting
      "Google still isn't that open source friendly. Sure, they use Linux for servers but that's simply because there is little competition in the market for 100,000 PC 'clusters' with zero license fees."

      No. The reason Google uses Linux is simply because they always have. Even since before they called it "Google" it's run off of Linux servers because they couldn't afford anything else.

      "Where is Google Desktop Search for Linux? Where is an official Google Talk client for Linux (yes, I know about Jabber, but it doesn't integrate with your gmail contact list)? Where is the Gmail notifier for Linux?"

      The reason we don't have any of these is because they're in touch with the OS community. Where's Google Desktop Search for Linux? I don't care, and from what I've seen and heard in the Linux community, no one else using Linux does either. We keep track of our files, and if we really need it, we've got Beagle and KFind. Same for these other programs. EVERY distro already comes with either Kopete or GAIM, both of which can handle AIM/ICQ, Jabber, MSN, and other chat protocols. And as for the GMail notifier. . . all it is, is an aggregator that retrieves an RSS feed from Google. If you really want your "GMail Notifier" you can set up Firefox, Konqueror, or Kontact - or any other program that can handle RSS feeds - for the same function. Since you'll likely be using these programs anyway, why would you want another program?

      "Until that changes, I don't really think that you can consider Google anything more than an open source user, not a contributor."

      You can't be serious. Even with the 400+ programmers they just brought into the open-source community, many of whom may have otherwise never even TOUCHED open-source software?

      Google does plenty for the Linux community. It may not seem like much to you, but it really is - they open-source LOTS of code, and they're even using Qt (the basis for KDE) for Google Earth (even on the Windows verson! And I hear they're going to make Linux and Mac versions!) Not only are they spreading code, but they're spreading word about the beauties of open-source. That's a lot more than MS ever did - and back in the mid-90's, Hotmail ran completely off of open-source software (yes, they bought it off someone else, but still, it ran open-source software for a while when it was in MS's possession).

      If you're trying to point out the fact that Google is using open-source to their advantage, so what? We'd be writing code with or without Google. I'm glad they support us, it's more than most people do. Plus, whether they profit or not from open-source, they ARE giving back to the OS community by open-sourcing their own code and, with "Summer of Code", bringing new people into the open-source programming community. And they're helping Mozilla out, too, by making GMail fully compatible with Firefox and Mozilla (instead of making it work only on IE, like many sites do) and hosting Firefox's start-up page.

      Like I said, these may all seem like small things to you, but that's what the open-source community is like. Everyone contributes in their own way - whether it's contributing code, spreading the word about open-source, or contributing ideas - and, while each individual contribution may not be much, all of these contributions together work make a HUGE difference.

      --
      www.linuxpenguin.net
    5. Re:awesome! by Vann_v2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      He's right. There were two big problems for me with Google's summer of code. The first was that they announced it well after most major summer internship deadlines. Even if I had wanted to do it I was already committed to doing an REU. The second was the pay. $4500 for the entire summer? Give me a break. Most REUs pay better than that per-hour and include room and board.

      Personally, I did an REU for the first 8 weeks of summer, which paid two thirds the amount Google was paying. The remainder of the summer I work full time and by the end I'll have made significantly more than Google's $4500, plus I'll have learned a lot of research-level mathematics. Most of the Summer of Code projects seemed to be plain BORING. Never mind that $4500 for someone in rural Iowa will go a lot farther than $4500 for someone living in San Francisco -- cost of living doesn't figure into Summer of Code anywhere, while it does for typical summer research or internship opportunities.

      I'm glad Google did this because it will help out a lot of projects, but the only way Summer of Code is compelling to a college student is if they've already exhausted other avenues.

    6. Re:awesome! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
      they're even using Qt (the basis for KDE) for Google Earth (even on the Windows verson! And I hear they're going to make Linux and Mac versions!)

      Yes, that makes them a user of open source, as the grandparent was saying. If they contributed changes back to TrollTech, they would be contributing.

      back in the mid-90's, Hotmail ran completely off of open-source software (yes, they bought it off someone else, but still, it ran open-source software for a while when it was in MS's possession).

      Which was a continuous embarrassment to them. They tried several times to switch to Windows before they finally got it right. They would have switched immediately if they were capable of doing so.

      Like I said, these may all seem like small things to you, but that's what the open-source community is like. Everyone contributes in their own way - whether it's contributing code, spreading the word about open-source, or contributing ideas - and, while each individual contribution may not be much, all of these contributions together work make a HUGE difference.

      We have higher standards for google because they're huge. What you're saying - many small contributions - works out well when you're talking about lone developers. A giant organization like google gets a lot of good out of open source. It's expected that they'll contribute a lot back. If they contributed nearly nothing, they would actually be hindering open source because other companies would follow their example.

      Look, I agree with your conclusion - that google does a lot of great stuff for the open source community - but your arguments still suck.

    7. Re:awesome! by MourningBlade · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Depends on where you live. Here in Oklahoma, $9.37/hr is pretty damn nice for a summer student internship.

      NYC it's not so hot.

      Also, given the nature of the project, it was possible to hold down a part-time job while working on it. So you're not comparing apples to apples.

      That "12 weeks * 40 hrs/week = 480 hours" would be with an office space they'd expect you to be in for those 40 hours.

    8. Re:awesome! by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      You are missing one important thing:

      SoC students got to work on what they wanted.

      I was lucky in my summer placement in that they grossly underestimated my abilities and so I was able to finish the work they had set for me in the first week, and I then got to spend the next 9 weeks playing with any bit of the project I wanted. Other people I've talked to were less lucky, and ended up doing little more than data entry and uninspiring grunt-work coding.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    9. Re:awesome! by laurensv · · Score: 2, Insightful

      OT, but still;
      " It's a bit like the CIA funding the mujahadeen to fight the soviets, it probably cost them $1 to inflict $10,000 worth of damage onto the soviet economy."
      That strategy did backfire upon the USA and did much more harm in the end.

    10. Re:awesome! by NetRAVEN5000 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      No, what alternatives you have ISN'T beside the point. MS is completely exempt from making MS Office for Linux because no one would want it - people switch to Linux to get away from MS products (this is why they stopped making IE for Unix/Linux - it sucks, and no Linux user would want to use it). Likewise, Google is exempt from making Linux versions of some of their products because Linux already has more powerful programs that do the same thing - and then some - and are already in your distro and that you probably use every day anyways.

      It's fine by me that Google didn't make Desktop Search and Gmail Notifier for Linux because I don't want them, as I already have programs that serve the same purpose. Likewise, it's fine by me that MS doesn't make MS Office for Linux because I would never buy it anyway.

      It's not that Google is focusing solely on Windows apps, it's that they're prioritizing and they realize that they shouldn't waste time making Linux programs that Linux users wouldn't use, and that, while they should try to please the Linux and Mac users, they have more to benefit from pleasing the Windows users. Obviously they do plan on porting some of their software to Mac and Linux, though - why else would they use the Qt toolkit for Google Earth? Qt is used mostly for Linux programs.

      --
      www.linuxpenguin.net
    11. Re:awesome! by Billly+Gates · · Score: 4, Interesting

      For a college student 9.37/hr is a ton of money.

      Even for underemployed former IT workers doing call center jobs for 10/hr (like where I work) is considered alot of money.

      This isn't 1999 anymore folks. IT is viewed as a cost center and perhaps maintance rather than long term investments if your lucky.

      Still it looks good on your resume and if I had more software programing experience I would be jumping over doing google's summer coding. $4500 is still money and my resume will look very very good and its a free advertisement to employers.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    12. Re:awesome! by be-fan · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think the flexibility that came with the SoC counts for a lot. Numerically, the SoC was a fairly significant pay-cut for me. I would have made almost 3x as much if I had taken my regular summer job (60 hour work-weeks add up quite quickly...). On the other hand, with the SoC, I had a lot of flexibility in my schedule, and more importantly, I was able to choose my own project. That in and of itself is worth the difference, at least for one summer. Let's face it --- it's very hard to get paid working on Lisp :) While I do like my regular job, as well as my major, I doubt I'm the only one who has tangential interests that they would love to persue, but often cannot due to lack of time or money. The SoC, while it might not pay like my regular job, made persuing such projects much more palatable.

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
    13. Re:awesome! by rbaf · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Open source != developing apps for Linux.

      • I want to see their current windows apps to be open source.

      • I want to see GFS to be open source.

      • If they're really developing a browser or whatever OSish thing, I want it to be 100% open source :-)

      This is not to say what they've done is without merit, of course it is a good thing, but if we're going to talk about Google offering open source products, they could be doing it already, and instead, they're quite secretive with almost everything they do (which again, is fine with me, but it contradicts what some of you guys are saying here)...

      Oh and before someone jumps in, offering APIs is not the same as open source. MS has been publishing APIs for years, the reason many people can and do write stuff for Windows.

      Do they really open source LOTS of code? Where?

  2. Summer's over? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Funny

    You mean the Summer of Code doesn't last forever?! It went by so fast...

    1. Re:Summer's over? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny
      You mean the Summer of Code doesn't last forever?! It went by so fast...
      Is "Summer of Code" supposed to be like the "Summer of Love" back in the 60's? For most geeks that would last less than 30 seconds.
    2. Re:Summer's over? by Gothic_Walrus · · Score: 5, Funny
      I got my first compiler
      Got it from the Google guys
      Tried to give Gaim file transfers
      It was the summer of two-oh-five

      Me and some guys from school
      Worked all night we tried real hard
      Jimmy quit and we never finished coding
      I shoulda known we'd never get far

      Oh when I look back now
      That summer seemed to last forever
      And if I had the choice
      Ya - I'd always wanna be there
      Those were the best days of my life...

      --
      Goo goo g'joob.
    3. Re:Summer's over? by blamanj · · Score: 4, Interesting

      To be followed by the "Bleak Winter of QA".

      I jest, but in some respects, it seems like a couple months of student hacking could do harm as well as good. It's not exactly condusive to good development practices.

    4. Re:Summer's over? by hritcu · · Score: 2, Informative

      Summer of Code: Mentoring Organization Faq:
      Q: Does the code have to become part of a mentoring organizations mainstream codebase?
      A: No, While we hope the code will be useful to the mentoring organization, we will not require that the code be used.

      --
      If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
  3. Dang. by Mikhailov · · Score: 4, Funny

    I wish I could have went, maybe they'll hold it this summer before I take the Visual Basic and A+ certification classes.

    1. Re:Dang. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      You have to be a student of an accredited school to do this.

    2. Re:Dang. by laffer1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      No see they didn't take most of the applicants.. you would not have done any work. The rejection was even delayed by 9 hours!

      Visual Basic .NET might have worked if they had mono in there but of course mono barely supports VB. Novell doesn't get that many people know VB.

      My project idea was for the FreeBSD project. My wife was also rejected with her ideas for the KDE Kate text editor.

      What i'd like to know is how many people actually got paid. The projects got money up front but the individuals had to code all summer and if they completed their projects in a satisfactory member to the parent group THEN they got money.

      --
      MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
  4. Where is the story? by hritcu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When I saw the subject I was really expecting to see some analysis, some statistics, at least a list of projects. Well ... where are all these things? The only reference in the article is to the official Summer of Code page, and that has been unchanged for weeks. So I have ask: where is the story?

    --
    If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
    1. Re:Where is the story? by jgaynor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Amen. I've had a problem with this since they announced it - such a great idea but no content on their site re: the actual work. They should have paid someone $4500 to maintain their summer of code page!

    2. Re:Where is the story? by yootje · · Score: 5, Informative

      LOL, I forgot to put my source in it: http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3 547611 Slashdot editors, please put it in the story?

      --
      My photo's.
    3. Re:Where is the story? by hritcu · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The article is interesting, and I really have to agree with the ending phrase:

      "Quite frankly, I don't know how Google will use the projects' results," Macieira said. "I hope they use it to promote free/open software and show that there is a healthy relation between the corporate world and the free software developers."

      I know that there will be enough of you trying to find a hidden (evil) reason for Google's action, but it is simply not the case. Google has very many benefits from open source, and now that they have the power to help back, they are actually doing it. Thank you Google.

      --
      If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
    4. Re:Where is the story? by JPriest · · Score: 3, Insightful

      My opinion is that Google is doing this to promote (improve) FOSS and Linux. It gives them a good opportunity to scout talent and also improve the only other real alternative to Microsoft products. If Ballmer ever does try to kill Google they could fight back by expanding this program.

      --
      Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
    5. Re:Where is the story? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Well, this isn't entirely altruistic, but then I'm distrustful of altruism. Google benefit because for a small investment they body of Free Software is improved. They can then skim these and use them as foundations for more of their own products. They also win because they gain good PR in the Free Software community. The projects benefit, because they receive funding and code. The students benefit, because they receive funding and mentoring. The world benefits because there is more Free Software available for them to use.

      Make no mistake though, Google are doing this because it benefits them. The fact that they choose to do things that benefit them and other people, rather than benefiting themselves at others expense, is why (for the moment) we like Google.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  5. Google sucks by gabecubbage · · Score: 5, Funny

    They rejected my application to write a search engine driven by sites linking in. It could've been huge!

  6. Lots of great projects by sznupi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I see some fun and very usefull stuff that came out of it. Too bad my favourite project from GAIM camp didn't turn out much... Crazy Chat is a lovely idea IMHO...enhancing communication via IM to include emotional messages presented usually by webcam, but without the bandwith (and difficulties of transmitting video) overhead. (Matrox tried somthing similar with their Headcasting, but it was useless IMO - it merely guessed how the animated face on the other end should look like based on voice, but this didn't add any additional information to communication, like Crazy Chat would, by "scanning", transmitting and displaying on animated, cartoony head, real emotional responces) I wonder if someone else would pick up the idea...

    --
    One that hath name thou can not otter
  7. One Google Clapping by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How "open" is the "Summer of Code" when there are no links to the projects? I've been looking for these projects, from which Google is getting the best PR since their IPO, since they started. Where are they? If source is released in a forest, and there's no one to read it, is it really open?

    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:One Google Clapping by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The "event" has lasted all Summer. Why not publish at least status of the projects? And I looked at the "mentoring organizations" page, which links only to the orgs' homepages, and their page of "ideas" projects which might have been candidates for the SoC. No readily available sign publications of the projects, which are now announced to be "concluded", which means the chance for the public to participate is over. Which would have been the point of an open project. Is Google trying to steal Netscape's irony crown of "unable to publish on the Web"?

      Why are you so sure the projects can be found, that Google will make the announcement? I'm pretty patient, especially since Google's SoC hasn't cost me anything, and any results are a bonus. But when a big corporation announces a feel-good project like SoC, and gets so much benefit from attracting developers and generating goodwill, it's hard to feel anything but left out when the Summer comes and goes, and all we have to show for it is the feel-good announcements.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    2. Re:One Google Clapping by hritcu · · Score: 3, Informative

      The "event" has lasted all Summer. Why not publish at least status of the projects?
      Because Google didn't know the status of the projects, at least not for the 400 projects not mentored by Google. That was the whole idea of having mentoring organizations: Google didn't have the resources to look after each of the 400+ students. However some students, and some mentoring organizations have made the status available to anybody (for example by spliting everything into tiny tasks and tracking them using JIRA) but nobody was forced to do so. Two months is very little time to finish a project, and most of the chosen projects were very ambitious. So my guess is that rather then providing status on the progress for the rest of the world, the students and mentors focused on developing software.

      Why are you so sure the projects can be found, that Google will make the announcement?
      I'm just guessing. It just makes sense that when you invest so much money into sponsoring projects you will want the world to know that you did so, and that many of them were successful. Google could gain some more press coverage because of this. But I think that this was not the goal of the whole thing, and they might even skip it. I'm very currious about what they could tell, so I really hope they won't.

      --
      If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
  8. Ended 10 Days Ago by DrIdiot · · Score: 3, Informative

    The "pencils down" for Google's Summer of Code was September 1st.

  9. Journalling for BSD filesystems? by Alwin+Henseler · · Score: 4, Informative
    Checking out FreeBSD's ideas page, my eye was caught by this: "UFS Journaling: Add transaction journaling and playback to the UFS filesystem. The goal is to increase the reliability of the filesystem and greatly reduce the need for a full 'fsck' after a crash or power loss."

    If I'm not mistaken, all major BSD's (Free, Open, and Net) support a feature called 'soft updates'. Basically, re-ordering filesystem updates in such a way, that the filesystem remains in a consistent state, even in the event of a badly-timed crash or powerout. All this to avoid the need for a full fsck on reboot.

    Quote from the FreeBSD features page: "Soft Updates allows improved filesystem performance without sacrificing safety and reliability. It analyzes meta-data filesystem operations to avoid having to perform all of those operations synchronously. Instead, it maintains internal state about pending meta-data operations and uses this information to cache meta-data, rewrite meta-data operations to combine subsequent operations on the same files, and reorder meta-data operations so that they may be processed more efficiently. Features such as background filesystem checking and file system snapshots are built on the consistency and performance foundations of soft updates."

    From the NetBSD site: "Soft Updates permit metadata writes to be ordered to achieve close to asynchronous disk performance without risk of metadata corruption. This significantly improves the performance of FFS file systems."

    You might still do a full fsck later (as regular maintenance), perhaps even as background task, but it wouldn't be needed for a reliable restart.

    Journaling is another way to do this, by adding an extra 'log' of the latest updates to a filesystem. Then in the event of a crash, you don't need to check the entire filesystem, but can bring it back into a consistent state by 'replaying' those latest updates from the journal.

    Now here's what I don't understand: why add journalling to a filesystem, when you're already updating it in a 'crash-proof' manner (soft updates)? What's the point? Seems rather like a step back to me, with soft updates looking like a smarter way to archieve crash-proof filesystem handling.

    I assume that this soft updates feature is limited to certain OS/filesystem combo's. And maybe journaling provides some thing(s) that soft updates doesn't? Can some knowledgable BSD user shed some light on all this?

    -- This sig just wasted another 0.x seconds of your precious time. Supporting banning sigs!
  10. Here's one Summer of Code project... by Jim+Buzbee · · Score: 2, Informative

    Tsync is a Summer of Code project. Looks cool...

  11. The article forgot NetBSD by hubertf · · Score: 4, Informative
    NetBSD got 7 slots assigned, see the NetBSD-SoC webpage for all the details. One of the projects (tmpfs) is already integrated into NetBSD, even.

    - Hubert

  12. Any results? by shish · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Projects I've been looking forward to:

    Apache Perchild MPM: Coder selected, can't find any code
    Apache mod-bandwidth-limit: 2 people have shown an interest, can't find any code
    Firefox bittorrent: Alpha 0.0.2
    Several gaim projects: One project has commited *something* to HEAD
    Several gnome projects: Can't find any news
    Several SVN projects: Can't find any news

    So has anything really changed?

    --
    I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
    1. Re:Any results? by DrIdiot · · Score: 2, Informative

      Firefox bittorrent (firepuddle):
      http://firepuddle.mozdev.org/

    2. Re:Any results? by Apathetic1 · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you weren't aware, a list of the SVN projects is here:
      http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2005-06/0975.shtml

      You can find more on the status of the projects in the Subversion dev list archives. I believe David Anderson's "Path-based authorization for svnserve" project was completed. I haven't really been watching the rest of the SVN SoC projects.

      --

      My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?

  13. Blenders Summer of Code projects by LetterRip · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here are SOC projects done for Blender,

    http://wiki.blender.org/bin/view.pl/Blenderdev/Sum merOfCode2005

    We had some really awesome projects happen (fluid simulation, high quality boolean tools, improved nurbs, 'Verse network integration, animation constraints improvements, and a drawing tool, alas two projects - ODE integration, and a live tutorial didn't happen).

    LetterRip

    1. Re:Blenders Summer of Code projects by TheQwe · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You also forgot to mention PyTexture, IMO one of the cooler projects to come out of SoC. qwe

  14. Perl Foundation by publius_ovidius · · Score: 3, Informative

    For those who are curious, the Perl Foundation had 8 Summer of Code projects funded. They were a blast to work with.

  15. Rejects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I was a reject. So while I was going to code through the summer anyway I decided to go on vacation to protest. WTF? Didn't like my project? Well, I *don't* have to do it then. Eventually I went free camping (many nudists, drinking and smoking joints) and got a new girlfriend. Ahh. Now its September. Well, back to work fellas!

  16. Nmap Project Results by fv · · Score: 5, Informative
    such a great idea but no content on their site re: the actual work. They should have paid someone $4500 to maintain their summer of code page!

    Yeah, for a $2 million dollar project it was ridiculously understaffed on the Google side. But Googlers like Chris DiBona and Greg Stein worked extraordinarily hard to keep things flowing relatively smoothly. So it still turned out to be a huge success for Nmap and most/all of the other participating projects. Thanks, Chris and Greg!

    So what did we (Nmap project) accomplish in those two months? The sponsored students and their credentials/projects are listed here. Much of their work can be found in Nmap 3.90, which was released on Thursday. SoC changes include:

    • Doug Hoyte nearly tripled the size of the version detection database, added OS/device type/hostname detection using the version detection DB. He made numerous other improvements as well.
    • Zhao Lei added more than 350 OS detection fingerprints to Nmap, bringing the total to 1684. He also helped design a 2nd generation OS detection (stack fingerprinting) system.
    • Adriano Monteiro designed and implemented an advanced Nmap GUI and results viewer named http://sourceforge.net/projects/umit">UMIT (screenshots).
    • Ole Morten Grodaas designed and implemented another advanced Nmap GUI and results viewer (its nice to have choices in open source!) named NmapGUI. Details and download here)
    • Chris Gibson has written a sweet little network tool named Ncat, which takes the venerable Netcat in an interesting and extremely useful direction with features such as connection brokering, socks proxying, and much more.

    It has been a crazy two months, but I'm very pleased to see so much accomplished! If you're using an older version of Nmap, you really should consider upgrading to 3.90 to see the difference.

    Cheers,
    Fyodor

    1. Re:Nmap Project Results by jgaynor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Two points here -

      1. Holy shit. wow. The above list just goes to show how much work can be involved in maintaing a tool which im sure many administrators take for granted and assume is more or less static.

      2. This is exactly the kind of summary each project needs. A list of developers and features (or at least a link to the relevant changelogs) and the version number (or future version number) we can see those changes in.

  17. Summer? How can it be summer? by ShakiirNvar · · Score: 2, Funny


    Its only just turned spring here!

    --
    "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." - HL Mencken
  18. Re:Summer was over in 4 weeks... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2, Funny

    You think that's bad. Try applying for a job at Google. You get the same email.

  19. Game? by Pixelmixer · · Score: 2, Funny

    What is the game they worked on? File searching, while being attacked by ravaging zombies that you have to search for their weakness by probing them with a google scanner. Then you attack them by searching for a weapon with your google auto-materializer that will materialize any weapon you can find in the google search database... how cool?!?

    --
    "What happend to just paying for a product without being constantly nibbled to death by Credit Card Ducks?"
  20. Re:Summer was over in 4 weeks... by quadra23 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You think that's bad. Try applying for a job at Google. You get the same email.

    Come to think of it, I remember applying for one of the of their moderator positions and the email I got consisted of this:

    We received your resume and would like to thank you for your interest in Google. After carefully reviewing your experience and qualifications, we have determined that we do not have a position available which is a strong match at this time.

    Thanks again for considering Google. We wish you well in your endeavors and hope you might consider us again in the future.

    Sincerely,
    Google Staffing

    Funny, it didn't address names or anything ... couldn't get much more generic indeed. At least the Google Summer of Code email said my name back!

  21. Re:awesome! NOT! by ivoras · · Score: 2, Interesting
    (I'm one of the "SoC students") There are couple more problems:

    - That's $4500 before taxes. Where I live at least jobs and services are usually negotiated with after-taxes sums, so I was disappointed that I had to give up 30% of the sum.

    - I'm not the only one that hasn't received even the so-called "initial" payment ($500 - 30%) even after it's been more than a week since the project ended

    - Not a single deadline Google set for themselves was honoured. Not for announcements, forms, nor payment.

    Organization of the SoC project from the Google's side was just horrible - they obviously didn't know what they are getting into. Some students didn't know details about how and when they will be paid until the end. Students were left to deal with taxation issuses without help from Google (and have did extraordinarily well - on occasions even proving what little advice Google gave was wrong).

    All this is inexcusable for such a large corporation, and one that actually has lots of experience with international issues. The have a lot to improve.

    --
    -- Sig down