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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/."
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.
Chris
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
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
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.
So before you call the Summer of Code a failure, question what the student workers _learned_ instead of how many stable releases they built.
...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
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!
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'.
Yeah, but then you're just trading it for Lilo notice spam, screwed up hostname spoofs that goes against the rfc, and other silliness. Why not just have it over MSN Chat if you're going to violate all the relevant standards anyways?
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
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
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...