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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."
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).
We're trying to come up with a high school program for next year. We couldn't figure one out for this year.
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
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
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.