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Summer of Code 2006 is On
chrisd writes "The Summer of Code is officially on again this year. As of today, we're taking in applications from mentoring organizations, so watch that list of mentoring organizations grow! Then, starting May 1st, we'll start taking student applications.
We've prepared two FAQs, one for Mentors and one for Students. We've also have created an IRC channel and Google Group for you. The website for the Summer of Code can be found at http://code.google.com/soc/."
I'm more interested in the summer of George.
Wouldn't it make more sense to be hosting it over at freenode? I have nothing against slashnet, but there's probably more coding discussion going on over there than any other irc network.
Spend your summers doing stuff other than coding. Get a job working outside or at Mac Donalds. Once you graduate and spend your days coding, you'll wish you did. You have years of 'summers of code' ahead - at your job. Try something else while you have the chance.
This is not work for Google in particular, but for open source projects in general. In my opinion, it is an excellent way to get young people to get involved with open source, as they are offered monetary incentive. This is unusual for an unproven developer joining any open source project, I think.
Karma: Bad (mostly due to all those "In Soviet Russia" jokes)
I was too young to participate in the competition last year, but I've been hoping against hope that the SOC would happen again this year.
Count me in, in other words.
I really think it's great that Google's taken this step to advocating Open Source among the future of software development (ie, students). It's exciting and a ton of great Open Source groups benefit from the fruits of these kids' labors.
Kudos to you, Google.
I think it would be nice to find out what ultimately became of all the work done on last summer's coding. Voice/Video support for Gaim was one of the Summer of Code projects last year, and it's still a feature being pushed further into the roadmap.
Do they really need a contest to keep nerds a pasty white/translucent color? It's not like summer was going to get anyone out of the basement. ;)
~S
Maybe I blinked and missed it, but I never saw a simple list of the successfully delivered SoC2005 projects. Where are they? Where will the 2006 projects be reported when they're delivered?
--
make install -not war
Evidence: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/2006/ 03/summer_of_code_six_months_on.html
What will GOOG do to stop the same outright shambles this time round?
I declare this... The SUMMER of GEORGE!
I guess that answers my question.
For some reason I had heard that it wasn't happening this year. I'm excited that it is.
What are you talking about? SOC participants get paid $4500.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
I realize that the program is called Summer of _Code_, but I think a lot of open source projects could benefit just as much from dedicated QA or documentation work. I mean, I've seen a lot more people complain about gaim's instability than its lack of a "music messaging" feature =P.
I think the Summer of Code is a good idea in principle, but what I find a bit questionable is how heavily Linux oriented it is. There are open source devlopers who write for Windows (and Mac, and Amiga, ect) as their primary platform, and a great many CS students use Windows as their primary OS. I feel that the Summer of Code is slightly biased against them (at least the last one seemed to be).
Philosophy.
Oh well, there's always next year.
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
...please take a look at my little piece on grading proposals Summer of Code 2005 written after the students who made it were selected.
-- Stanislav Shalunov
Damn, they still have the silly restriction as last year. What about us around age 18-22 who are not yet in university because we have taken a year of in mums basement - so we can work on our own projects?
...If its just an intern program for the younger generation, that great! But from an output perspective, what have we received from it? Is it worth the hype?
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
No offense, but if you think Windows (or Mac or Amiga or whatever) needs more representations, then I suggest you tell those CS students using Windows and open source developers for Windows to participate!
Better yet, tell the Windows open source projects to offer to be mentors, and tell the CS students to apply. Heck, the two groups might even match up!
Personally, I think the SoC 2005 participants included a great number of platform-agnostic projects. Web apps like Drupal, Gallery, XWiki, Java projects, Perl, Python (all multi-platform groups...) Mozilla/Firefox, OpenOffice... the list seems pretty good to me. Heck, even WinLibre (free software for Windows) was represented.
But by all means, if you think there need to be more participation from groups X, Y, and Z then I think you better tell them to sign up ASAP!
alter table damiam 'insert into get_humor (sarcasm, hyperbole, irony) values (1, 1, 1);';
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
The problem with the Internet is that sometimes humor is just plain lost. I think I have a fairly good appreciation of humor and sarcasm, and reading over your original post, I still don't see it. Since you've been modded down, apparently most mods don't see it either. It seems the words you wrote don't effectively convey the idea you were thinking.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Yeah. One person's 'funny as hell' is another's 'huh?'
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
Although considering 12 weeks to do the project (assuming a quarter system), and 40 hour work weeks, that amounts to 4500/12/40 = 9.375 dollars per hour. If you're good enough to join SoC, for working that long you can get better pay at a traditional internship. The two big points are, however: a) Do you even need to work 40 hour work weeks to complete your project? b) Are you willing to give up better pay for open-source work you enjoy, and improve a project you use?
Personally, I'm not sure about the former because I wasn't a SoC participant last year, but I'd answer yes to the latter. Just food for thought. Maybe past SoC participants can chime in?
I fail to see the humor as well... made no sense. May want to work on that.
Hah! And I wanted to read the article..
At least NetBSD and FreeBSD where mentors last year. I'm not even sure "Linux" was really a mentor.
No GNU has been Hurd during the making of this comment.
I'm glad that they want to improve FOSS in this way, even for many projects that will probably never benefit Google directly. For example, anyone that uses Blender for animation would definitely say that last year's SoC project to add fluids simulation is an awesome feature: http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Fluids_simulation.675 .0.html
What will GOOG do to stop the same outright shambles this time round?
The page you linked to says nothing about outright shambles. He specifically says "I don't want this post to be seen as bashing either SoCcers or mentors". The page offers some excellent comments and suggestions for 2006, and I'm glad to see that Google is listening (Chris responded in the comments). Some of the suggestions are also meant for us mentors. The Nmap project is proud to have been invited to participate in SoC again for 2006, and we are looking forward to it!
You can call it "outright shambles" if you want, but all the emails I have from participants talking about how much they learned and enjoyed the program speak otherwise. And was it valuable to the Nmap project too? Take a look at their efforts and decide for yourself:
They did much more -- these are just some of the highlights. So I, for one, am looking forward to continuing these outright shambles again this year! But at the same time, there is always room for improvements . So I appreciate Gerv's constructive criticism.
-Fyodor
Just as a hint, in case you're trying to be funny in future:
Most funny things have some element of truth to them. Saying "Haha! Google is suckering students into working for free!" isn't terribly funny, because it's completely false.
In fact, even if it were true, it wouldn't be particularly funny, even from a schadenfreude point of view. (To laugh at someone's misfortune, I think most people need to believe that the target deserves to be taken down a peg. Anonymous cash-strapped students are not ideal for laughing-at.)
For some reason I found this hilarious.
Which means I've obviously been browsing at -1 for too long.
Microsoft interns get paid $4800/month + thousands in benefits.
I found it hilarious too.
The summer of code would be great if it was actually on during the summer, and I didn't have university to worry about.
damn Aussie seasons
I don't suppose there's any chance of a Google "Winter of Code"
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
Actually its about $1000 less than that if you live in a country not blessed by perfect friendship with the US (no tax agreements with US? forget about 30% of the money).
Wow, that's weird. I just sent in a request yesterday asking if I could work on something for a thesis paper. Now, less than 24 hours later... Nice of them to create the program after I sent the mail yesterday... Grin
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Forgive my pedantry.
Check out 2005--"410 slots, followed by KDE, FreeBSD, and 38 other mentoring organizations. The accepted applications will be posted early next week. More than 8700 applications have been submitted."
Look, just don't bother. I'll be entering and don't want more competition. Post-singularity we can all program all we want, but there's too much competition world-wide now.
Of course, developers need to be able to document too, but if a project is solely documentation, it is really a new generation of technical writers they are nourishing.
be paid?
What kind of crap is that? Did Cris DiBona write it?
It's easy to say that FOSS doesn't want money when you're working for google with a salary of $350K per year Cris.
Open Source means that the user does not have to pay to use the software, but money will be very welcome if the user is satisfied with it and believes it is worth it. It's up to user's maturity.
So before you call the Summer of Code a failure ...
Failure can only be measured in relation to the goal. So I'd say:
So while it was a success for Google I've some mixed feelings about the success for the OpenSource community. This is mostly because of the setup of the SOC and raises the questions what had Google in mind: To support and enhance OpenSource or to find some fine developers?
Since the new SOC is already under way it doesn't make much sense to suggest some changes but they might at least open the eyes for the SOC next year:
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
And apparently your 'funny as hell' is everyone else's 'you're a fuckwit'.
Now now, remember to keep your humor relation about you.
You all may know that OpenSource isn't much loved by the ordinary users because of a range of reasons. The OSDL survey (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005 .pdf) shows that even the majority of the Linux users wish for Windows-Only applications. Novell's cool solution website (http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/16798 .html) proves that their users (customers) prefer Windows-Only applications. And the thread at LinuxQuestions.org (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthrea d.php?t=105955) gives more hints. To solve this I've a vision outlined in here (http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html ).
Sure enough this vision can only become true if many of you choose to participate which of course means a lot of work for all of you. But exactly here comes the Google SoC into play it would allow to get your own project be converted to conform to the wyoGuide guidelines (http://wyoguide.sourceforge.net/guidelines/conten t.html). So I encourage any project to apply for the Soc (http://code.google.com/soc/) to make it
So don't fear to apply even if your project is just a small one since when your project is converted it most probably will attract more users and more developers, soon surpassing any project which doesn't care.
If you are just a user of a project make the developers aware of this. You might even check the guidelines yourself and help in testing. Or you might help in suggestions for corrections, etc. Tell it to your friends, your university stuff or anywhere else. Just make this vision become true and the first Top inhibitors of Linux desktop adoption gets finally solved.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
Grandparent needs a rebuttal... Why complain when you can *do* something...
just curious, but does anyone know if there are any programmers who performed well in their summer of code projects and were subsequently offered jobs at google? i know google was (is) trying to curry favor with the open source community, but i expect they were also scouting talent to some extent as well.
Google has jumped the shark.
NetBSD is once again going to be a mentoring organization. A number of project ideas is available here, though applicants can (and should) of course also come up with their own ideas.
-- "Tradition is the illusion of permanence."