Google's Summer of Code Over

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.

Comments

awesome!

[xintegerx]

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.

Re:awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Re:awesome!

[NetRAVEN5000]

"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.

Re:awesome!

[Vann_v2]

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.

Re:awesome!

[Billly Gates]

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.

Summer's over?

[__aaclcg7560]

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

Re:Summer's over?

[Gothic_Walrus]

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...

Re:Summer's over?

[blamanj]

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.

Dang.

[Mikhailov]

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

Where is the story?

[hritcu]

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?

Re:Where is the story?

[jgaynor]

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!

Re:Where is the story?

[yootje]

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?

Re:Where is the story?

[hritcu]

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.

Google sucks

[gabecubbage]

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

Lots of great projects

[sznupi]

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...

Journalling for BSD filesystems?

[Alwin Henseler]

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!

The article forgot NetBSD

[hubertf]

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

Blenders Summer of Code projects

[LetterRip]

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

Nmap Project Results

[fv]

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

Re:Nmap Project Results

[jgaynor]

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.