Google Summer of Code Results

Nattfodd writes "Almost two months after the projects, deadline, partial (but fairly complete) results of Google Summer of Code are here. The completion rate of projects (and thus payment of the students) was approximately 90%, which would certainly qualify for a 'huge success' of the operation. Summer of Code paid more than 400 students of 49 countries to spend their summer helping open-source projects, 4500$ on completion. Now we just have to wait for the T-shirts..."

Comments

Re:Nice idea, poor pay

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

Did you consider that the internet, and this program, are accessible also from outside of your country?

Re:Nice idea, poor pay

[iambarry]

Who says that many of those who participated in summer of code didn't also have summer CS ineternships?

--Barry

Re:Some got paid considerably LESS than $9.30/hour

[kebes]

Math may not lie, but people can misrepresent what's going on.

Google didn't pay these people anything. Rather, it provided grants/scholarships to people interested in working on open source code. People (coders and/or organizations) submitted proposals for ideas they wanted to work on, and Google selected some worthy ones that they would give extra money to, so as to encourage students to spend time doing some open-source coding.

Google was not hiring these people to work on specific projects that get added to the portfolio of Google products. Everyone involved could have turned down the grant money if they had a better offer. But for these students, who would have likely worked on these (or other) open-source projects over the summer anyway (to bolster their CV and/or because it's fun), the grant was probably a welcome bonus.

Everyone benefits from the open-source software that has been produced by these (partially funded) volunteers. Remember that the people working on these projects were contributing to open-source projects that are, by and large, non-commercial. That is, the summer-of-code people got $4500, whereas everyone else working on the project got $0. They are doing it because they want to. It is not a (traditional) job.

Re:Google pays MCDONALD'S wages

[Beatbyte]

How much would you sacrifice to get experience, build your reputation, and have Google on your resume?