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Summer of Code Now Taking Student Applications
chrisd writes "Just wanted to let you know that we've opened up the student application process for the Summer of Code. We've signed up ~100 mentoring organizations this year, including Apache, Postgres, Xiph, The Shmoo Group, Drupal, Gallery and many others. We're accepting applications through May 8th this year."
The Freenet project is also looking for students, please take a look here for more information. Our new Freenet Client Protocol spec makes it very easy to build applications on top of the new Freenet 0.7 "darknet" architecture.
Because I'm sure you might have to sign a contract of some sort.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Maybe practice for a year, topcoder is a good place to start.
This reminds me of an article on /. the other day about young people losing interesting in coding. The fact that they can have this program and it's successful tells me that they are in fact *not* losing interest in coding.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Wikipedia *always* needs more coders - the 3-5 that we have just are not enough. Here's the relavant page
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
It was a nice surprise to see FFmpeg in there, these guys, while largely unknown, deserve some _serious_ credits for their work. If you don't know, FFmpeg develop the libav libraries (libavcodec and libavformat) that demux, mux, decode and encode pretty much every video and audio format in existence.
If you use mplayer, you rely on these libs. If you use xine, you rely on their work. If you use VLC - same. Heck, even if you use Media Player Classic + ffdshow on Windowz you use their libs.
Thumbs up!
(No, I have nothing to do with them. I do use their libs in my project though, and they are nice).
http://haiku-os.org/learn.php?mode=news_view&id=40 6&haikuusersession=c036c3e0b54b7e66a167d1654b692eb 2/
It's sad that they didn't even bother to reveal the reason why they refused.
Internet2 needs you as a coder this summer. </shameless plug>
-- Stanislav Shalunov
For the second year, the Fedora Project is participating in the Summer of Code as well.
See this page for more details.
You have to be 18 to take your education furthur? Why can't someone learn something that will influence their coding for the rest of their lives? if they know how to code, then why can't they learn to use it? Many aspiring minorities have empty summers and would love an open door.
Don't forget Blender! http://www.blender.org/
There are all sorts of cool things that could be done as projects, pretty much any siggraph paper, any computer graphics research, etc. would make a good candidate.
LetterRip
What I would like to say, though, is that I noticed at least a few people felt left out - their projects weren't accepted, or they didn't meet one or another entry requirement. (Hell, I've a whole bunch of projects that I could use help with! I'm working on some games, some crypto stuff, some utilities... Nothing quite like the smell of shorted-out synapses!)
I really do urge those who don't want (or can't) code for SoC but do want to get involved in a project that needs help to contact any of those who are mentioning projects being short of coders. We can't all pay or give prizes, but volunteer work on any serious project can be enjoyable and can be a good addition to a resume in some cases. (Volunteer work experience is still work experience.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I think those are some of the coolest projects, though the page lists others (and is always growing as I get new ideas). And don't forget, you can always propose any new idea you come up with -- don't feel limited to that list.
And while we hope you consider Nmap, remember that you can increase your odds by applying to multiple projects. I've seen some pretty cool ideas from the other organizations.
-Fyodor
If you are a student and keen on developing open source, then the Summer of code is a great opportunity for experience, kudos, and some cash. Either pick a project (some are pretty broad) or if you prefer come up with your own idea (compatible with the project) and submit it to one of the the approx. 70 organisations.
Or pick a project based on the mentor - many are captains of open source!
Most mentors will be happy to have anyone who has ability, and the motivation to work through to complete a project.
Happy moony
Since we're on the topic of shameless plugs, Adium got the nod too. But they knew last week. Any reason why it took so long for this to be published? Also, is there any way of insuring that all the projects get a fair shake at volunteers? I mean, everyone's gonna see Mozilla and GNU and friends on the list and jump on it.
I'm wondering how this would compare to an internship, considering that's what college students such as myself would otherwise be doing with our time.
On the con side, the pay seems slightly low. You work from home only talk to your mentor over the internet, which seems like it might distract from the learning experience. I've telecommuted before, and while it might seem convenient at first, there are numerous related to communication, and being able to go home at the end of the day and be a psycologically non-work space that detract from those advantages. Probably the biggest problem is staying in touch with people who are in different time zones, or who merely have different working schedules. In a telecommuting situation, some people work at odd hours.
Maybe someone who worked on the summer of code previously could comment on how easy or hard it was to keep in touch with his mentor? Were there many mentors who basically ignored partipants (no need to name names)? How helpful were they in general?
Overall, as I see it the strong benefit is to be able to come up with your own project, and to be able to work on open source. Those kind of go hand in hand to give the participants a lot of freedom in what they do. For me, this would be worth the negatives mentioned above.
I guess one last factor to address, that might be merely a tie breaker for some people or a deal breaker for others, is just how good it will look on a resume. College students looking for internships are looking for work experience, but also an opportunity to break into the industry. Will future employers look at there resume's and think, "He worked for a big name company over this summer, came up with his own project and executed it." Alternatively, an employer might wonder about time spent in such an unstructured way, and wonder if participants goofed off all summer. I sincerely doubt this, but its something to consider and maybe something someone in a hiring position in industry could comment on.
While some smart,young people will choose to get involved with these open source projects, some other smart,young people will be developing and launching their Web 2.0 startups. Yep, the seeds of the next Google will be planted this summer, and it definitely won't come from the people working for $4500(?) for 16 weeks of full-time work.
Thank god Larry and Sergey didn't spend their time working on some open source project called BackRub, otherwise there won't have been any Google.
To every geek, coder, student out there....let this be the Summer of You. Fwak Google and fwak open source. Do it for yourself. Create great code and try to make serious money off it.
I would imagine that anyone interested in doing one of these jobs for no pay is quite welcome to do so, 18 or not.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
- Gordon @ IA
Blender got a lot of super cool features in the last Googoe SOC. It would be an absolute shame to miss this opportunity. There is so much work that is done, but so much more that can be done. The animation system got recoded last time, plus fur/hair/cloth rendering (and a hundred more items I can't remember right now). People are shocked at what you can do with a program whos binaries are still less than 10 megabytes. It rivals applications ten times as large (in file size). Blenderheads unite! Get to the Google SOC site, submit a great proposal, and impress the Siggraph crowd like never before!
Check it out... you can do work for NASA Mars missions: http://code.google.com/soc/mars/about.html
DiscDividers tabbed plastic CD dividers: divider cards f
I would have loved the opportunity to do this while I was in college. Seize it while you can!
When you are a little kid, you have tons of time, but little skill, so you spend a lot of time being bored.
When you are an adult, you have a lot more skill and you're capable of doing great things, but so many things compete for your attention (job, house/apartment, car, family) that it's harder to chase big ideas. The people who do so become the abnormal people we call "startup founders."
College is this great crossover where you're just becoming good enough to do great things, but it's still normal to live in a totally non-domestic way. It's the time to chase big dreams.
Google is not only giving you lots of great ideas for interesting work and arranging for mentors to guide you through the learning process, but they're paying you to do it! Find a project that sounds up your alley, and do it!
First of all I'm not trying to troll - Summer of Code is a great initiative! Please take this as a question, not as critique.
I see a small potential problem however: In some 3 months, one is supposed to implement a project. Fair enough, but doesn't that usually require significant familiarity with the code of that project? How is a student expected to have this familiarity? Does he/she get it while working on the project or is he/she supposed to already have it?
This is a point that has stopped many enthusiasts. They are afreaid that, while they are experienced coders, they have no idea how Program X works, and are afraid to even try to extend it.
Has this been adressed in any way?