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Summer of Code 2006 is On

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the go-make-a-name dept.

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/."

9 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Dear Students, by Dear+Students · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Dear Students, by SeaFox · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You have years of 'summers of code' ahead - at your job. Try something else while you have the chance.

      Yes, but those summers of coding will be heavily deadline driven and for projects one probably doesn't want to work on that much. Whereas a 'Summer of Code' is more about working on something of personal interest and learning. It's more a workshop than a day-job.

    2. Re:Dear Students, by someone300 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Summer of code:
      - Working on something you enjoy
      - Possibility of getting 4500 USD personally and 500 USD for your favourite OSS project
      - Doing something that will benefit at least one person somewhere else in the world, if not many thousands.
      - Practice for future job probably
      - Something reasonably unique to put on CV

      McDonalds
      - Boring, hot, horrid job
      - Shit money
      - Further perpetuating the problem of obesity and heart problems by providing overweight middle aged men and women and their kids, for whom they can't be bothered to cook a nutritious meal, with their daily dose of fatty dead animal
      - Time spent doing repetitive tasks that require no skill or thought
      - Just another generic teenage job to put on your CV, if mentioned at all

    3. Re:Dear Students, by It'sYerMam · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you're going to do CS, don't even bother listening to this guy. You get out of University, and all the job offers are asking for experience. I don't think they mean experience in McDonalds. Summer of Code is a way to make a quick buck, doing something fun and challenging that will look hella good on a CV or application. I don't see any negative points except for the effort required...

      --
      im in ur .sig, writin ur memes.
  2. Re:Cheaper than outsourceing to India by xoran99 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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)

  3. Maybe Summer of Code is too narrow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. A bit distasteful by Umbral+Blot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.
  5. Re:Summer of Code 2005 was teh fail by noneme · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Was the point to produce full-fledged software or to give students a chance to learn more? If google wanted finished and functional software, I'm sure they'd hire the experts to get it done in time. The point of the summer of code is to grant computer science students the opportunity to do something in their field for a summer job instead of flipping burgers.

    So before you call the Summer of Code a failure, question what the student workers _learned_ instead of how many stable releases they built.

  6. Then Write a Proposal... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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!