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Google Launches Summer of Code 2007

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the back-once-again dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Looks like Google has announced that it will be doing Summer of Code again this year. The program looks pretty much the same this year but they have built time into the program schedule for students to get up to speed before they start coding. Nice job, Google."

74 comments

  1. Nerd much? by svunt · · Score: 5, Funny

    I just can't get over the name...'summer of code' seems exactly right for a nerded-up spring break.

    1. Re:Nerd much? by svadu · · Score: 1

      "nerded-up spring break" - lol I need to write that down!

    2. Re:Nerd much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Nerds Gone WILD!!

      Buy it now, $9.99

      These nerds just cant wait to show you their interconnects. You've never seen anything like THIS before!

    3. Re:Nerd much? by rjshields · · Score: 1

      Who modded this troll? It seems pretty insightful to me. Do yourself a favour and do something else instead. Travel, meet new people, see new places. You have the rest of your life to spend in front of a computer!

      --
      In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
    4. Re:Nerd much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Look, you're on Slashdot. It really doesn't make sense to complain about nerdyness here.

    5. Re:Nerd much? by edschurr · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Retirees have more time and money to travel than anyone else, and your mind is at its peak when you're young.

    6. Re:Nerd much? by rjshields · · Score: 1

      your mind is at its peak when you're young
      That's exactly why you should do something interesting rather than sitting behind a computer! All the people I know that "didn't get out much" are (now) very dull indeed.
      --
      In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
    7. Re:Nerd much? by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      These nerds just cant wait to show you their interconnects. You've never seen anything like THIS before! And I'll make sure I never see anything like it again! Where's my H2SO4?
    8. Re:Nerd much? by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      your mind is at its peak when you're young

      That's exactly why you should do something interesting rather than sitting behind a computer! All the people I know that "didn't get out much" are (now) very dull indeed. You're apparently not the target demographic for this sort of thing then. I have a feeling that the successful applicants will find coding a real project very interesting indeed.
    9. Re:Nerd much? by svunt · · Score: 1

      Wow, so much reaction...I've got nothing against nerds, I just found the name amusing.

    10. Re:Nerd much? by Vexorian · · Score: 2

      Who modded this troll? It seems pretty insightful to me. Do yourself a favour and do something else instead. Travel, meet new people, see new places. You have the rest of your life to spend in front of a computer!
      Says an slashdot user...

      It is not really a nerded-up spring break, since it is a summer of code.
      --

      Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
    11. Re:Nerd much? by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      "It was a summer's tale: just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."

      (as seen on somebody's sig)

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    12. Re:Nerd much? by rjshields · · Score: 1

      Thing is I'm not sat behind a computer 24/7/365, just for the hours of my job and a few hours at home. I certainly wouldn't consider spending my holidays/vacations sitting behind a computer. Getting a balance of interests and experiences helps you to become a more rounded person instead of just a gibbering nerd...

      --
      In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
    13. Re:Nerd much? by hernyo · · Score: 1

      Right - students should be motivated to fill their holiday with social activities instead. This geekism or workaholism will have side effects. Sooner or later.

    14. Re:Nerd much? by rjshields · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You're apparently not the target demographic for this sort of thing then. I have a feeling that the successful applicants will find coding a real project very interesting indeed.
      Yes you're right. When you've spent all year sitting behind a computer studying or writing code, who could think of anything better to do than spend all summer sitting behind a computer writing code? Presumably this is aimed at same sort of person who closes all the blinds in the daytime and fills their room with artificial light. Besides, all the best students will likely already be involved with real open source projects.
      --
      In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
    15. Re:Nerd much? by dextromulous · · Score: 1

      Thing is I'm not sat behind a computer 24/7/365, just for the hours of my job and a few hours at home. I certainly wouldn't consider spending my holidays/vacations sitting behind a computer.
      From the Summer of Code goals page:

      Google Summer of CodeTM has several goals:

      • Get more open source code created and released for the benefit of all
      • Inspire young developers to begin participating in open source development
      • Help open source projects identify and bring in new developers and committers
      • Provide students in Computer Science and related fields the opportunity to do work related to their academic pursuits during the summer (think "flip bits, not burgers")
      • Give students more exposure to real-world software development scenarios (e.g., distributed development, software licensing questions, mailing-list etiquette)

      You are not who they are targeting, so do not worry about how other people choose to spend their free time.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
    16. Re:Nerd much? by It'sYerMam · · Score: 1

      Whatever gave you the idea that PHP, Gaim, Xorg and so on are not real open source projects? While there's obviously no reason for you to participate, I don't see why you're saying that other people shouldn't - I'm sure most if not all people who take part find it interesting. In the case of CS students, it will probably give them something to put on their CV that they wouldn't otherwise have.

      --
      im in ur .sig, writin ur memes.
    17. Re:Nerd much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In other news, CmdrTaco has launched the summer of choad. If anyone is interested in participating, meet him at the Route 46 Glory Hole in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

    18. Re:Nerd much? by rjshields · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Whatever gave you the idea that PHP, Gaim, Xorg and so on are not real open source projects?
      That's not what I said or thought and I'm not quite sure how you inferred that from my post! The point I was trying to make is that people who are really "into" their work will already be involved in projects in their spare time and so would not need anything extra to put on their CVs. They can then spend their summer break doing fun things other than coding. I really don't think it's healthy to spend 365 days a year behind a computer.
      --
      In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
    19. Re:Nerd much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      ...the Route 46 Glory Hole in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

      What's her name? What are her rates? And which diner/payphone# does she frequent?

    20. Re:Nerd much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      a glory hole is a place where you insert your dick and pretend it's a girl on the other side sucking you off. And hope it's not a dude with a lit cigarette, or pliers.

  2. Not helping the problem... by commisaro · · Score: 5, Funny

    Couldn't they make it the Winter of code? That was programmers could use the summer to maximize their sun exposure over the 2-3 days/year they spend outside!

    1. Re:Not helping the problem... by Trogre · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For half the world, they have.

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    2. Re:Not helping the problem... by kestasjk · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm in Australia, so it'll be for the winter, but the problem is that the winter holidays aren't as long as the summer ones at my uni. :(

      --
      // MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
    3. Re:Not helping the problem... by edschurr · · Score: 3, Informative

      Four hours of minimum wage work will pay for a year's supply of Vitamin D3; who needs the "outside"? (As I understand it there is no ceiling).

    4. Re:Not helping the problem... by chengmi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The northern hemisphere (having much more land mass than the southern hemisphere) is home to 90% of the human population. So it's "Winter of Code" for only 10% of the world's population. That figure is much lower if you apply the "programmer" constraint.

    5. Re:Not helping the problem... by hachete · · Score: 2, Funny

      BALMER:
      Now is the winter of our discontent
      Made glorious summer by this sun of Google;
      And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
      In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
      Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
      Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
      Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
      Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
      Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
      And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
      To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
      He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
      To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
      But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
      Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
      I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
      To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
      I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
      Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
      Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
      Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
      And that so lamely and unfashionable
      That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
      Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
      Have no delight to pass away the time,
      Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
      And descant on mine own deformity:
      And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
      To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
      I am determined to prove a villain
      And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
      Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
      By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
      To set my brother Sergei and the king
      In deadly hate the one against the other:
      And if King William be as true and just
      As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
      This day should Sergei closely be mew'd up,
      About a prophecy, which says that 'L'
      Of Williams's heirs the murderer shall be.
      Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
      Sergei comes.

      --
      Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
  3. pat on the back by PoopDaddy · · Score: 5, Funny
    "Nice job, Google."

    Google: "Thanks, Google PR employee"

  4. project benefits by Grumpy+Wombat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The SOC project might be worthwile from the point of view of the students gaining experience, but from what I have heard there has been a mixed reaction to the results from the projects they have been working on. Are there any metrics showing the net benefit (or otherwise) to the projects and the relative cost in supervision & reworking code (ie, we got equivalent productivity of say 0.7 of the mentors normal productivity for the time spent mentoring) and how many of the students went on to continue contributing to that or another open source project?

    1. Re:project benefits by TheoMurpse · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yeah -- two years of Summer of Code funding for students working on gaim, and it still has yet to have a new (non-beta) release. It's getting close, to be fair. Also, from hearsay on the IRC dev channel on Freenode, the reason that video/voice hasn't been integrated into gaim like it was promised a year and a half ago is because one of the SOC workers changed the codebase so much that there was no way they could integrate v&v as easily as was originally planned.

      So basically, from my POV as a pretty interested gaim user, SOC has prevented the integration of v&v into gaim and there has yet to be a new (non-beta) release since before SOC began. Screw any more features added to gaim except v&v and fixed file transfers. Those are the two things preventing many people from fully switching from the official clients of other protocols. I hate having Skype and AIM installed just so I can video chat with non-power users. For the same reason I cannot switch to Linux.

      But hey, I guess Google taught the SOC coders well -- don't push out finished products; instead, just push out betas and keep them beta for years and when users complain: "Hey, it's just beta."

    2. Re:project benefits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Keep in mind the mentors approve the person.
      This is the same as if you hired a consultant for 3 months.

      The results you get from the students are a direct result of the support the mentor and the community around the project provide.

      Also a large influence is the students ability to take advantage of both the community and the mentor. But this is hopefully less an issue as the mentor gets to chose the student.

      Its only in its third year now. And I imagine the mentors have had no experience being a real mentor. And those that do, this is much different then how they normally operate.

      Most people say "read the list", they expect you if you wish to join the community to put out the effort. Projects that fail I think are a result of mentors failing to grasp the key difference.

      Summer of Code is 3-months. And after that three months expect the person to disappear.
      So you can't say be a mentor by just going around saying "check the mailing list".

      You have to be a mentor the same way a normal company deals with a contractor.
      The students have to be helped and hit the ground running with the communities backing.

      So far a lot of failures I've seen is this lack of understanding.
      Some do, but by and large students are not joining the community.

      So many projects complain that now they don't have a 'maintainer' for the code the student wrote.
      Yeah, well, what do you expect? You hired a contractor.
      The contract is up. You now have to maintain it.

      I believe once this difference is understood, and once mentors and the community around the project realize this as well, there will be a lot more projects the succeed rather then fail.

    3. Re:project benefits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Or maybe the Gaim developers aren't very good managers and/or have poor code modularity, Inkscape just released a new version with blur coded via a GSoC project, Blender is about to release a version with the insanely great sculpting tools also done via GSoC.

    4. Re:project benefits by chx1975 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yes the results are mixed. But the Drupal project got a webchick (really, that's her nick!) from the 2005 SoC and since then we hope that every SoC will have someone like her (hardly possible, but let's hope).

    5. Re:project benefits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The only SoC project I've been following is freenet, it definetely helped them out with various things e.g. a new portable queued download/upload manager, improved email-over-freenet and network simulations to model routing.

    6. Re:project benefits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Gaim devs have years of practice doing exactly what you describe. If you had any familiarity with the project you shouldn't have expected anything else to have happened. Getting some SOC coders to work on the project is not going to completely turn it around.

    7. Re:project benefits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does anyone else think it's hilarious that he's complaining about Google keeping things in Beta... and then links to the service that came out of beta a month or more ago?

    8. Re:project benefits by Jorrit · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's only one case that you now mention. In our case (Crystal Space) every SoC programmer worked in his own SVN branch so there was no risk of the code being changed too much. I think most other projects also handled this in a similar way. So I don't see how this can qualify as a problem with the SoC program. If that same student had come to work for Gaim outside of SoC and if he would have done the same job then the same problem would have occured.

      Greetings,

      --
      Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
    9. Re:project benefits by ShinmaWa · · Score: 1

      Gmail still says "beta" for me... *shrug*

      --
      The /. Effect: Thousands of users simultaneously accessing a site to not read its content.
    10. Re:project benefits by webchickenator · · Score: 4, Informative

      My view is that SoC isn't so much about getting usable code at the end (though it's always great if that happens), but about attracting and retaining new talent to the project. I will use me as an example. ;) My 2005 SoC project was the Quiz module for Drupal. That module turned into an utter train wreck, because it was assigned to two students (myself and another guy), one of whom (guess which one? ;)) overbooked himself during the summer and wasn't able to get basically anything done. So while half of the project was finished (the backend, storage stuff), the other half was not (the front end, "actually take a quiz" stuff). It then fell on my shoulders to try and finish the other half in between other things after SoC was over. I had it almost working, and then a major API change landed just as I got a full-time consulting job, so the module was stuck in a limbo state for months. So by the measure of "usable code", that project was a miserable failure. However, in the meantime, I had become an active member of the documentation team, I was reviewing dozens of core patches a week, I was responding to user support questions in the forum, I was evangelizing the Drupal project to everyone I came across, and so on. Then after SoC, I went on to do even more things, and am now completely immersed in the community and helping out with core development. So hopefully, in the grand scheme of things, I have helped the Drupal project more than I have hurt it by the lack of usable code at the end of my SoC project. Though as a "happy ending" aside, I did manage to pick away at the module over the months to the point where it was semi-usable again about a year later. And some other people came in and took it the rest of the way, and now it's used on several sites, and has a little mini community of contributors around it. Woohoo. :)

    11. Re:project benefits by LetterRip · · Score: 1

      "Are there any metrics showing the net benefit (or otherwise) to the projects and the relative cost in supervision & reworking code (ie, we got equivalent productivity of say 0.7 of the mentors normal productivity for the time spent mentoring) and how many of the students went on to continue contributing to that or another open source project?"

      I can't speak for other projects but for Blender - we have had some extremely productive coders join through their summer of code projects and the benefit to Blender has been far in excess of the mentoring investment that was needed. Also SoC has allowed some of those who were already coding on Blender to take time that they would have required to do a different summer job, and instead spend it working on improving Blender.

      LetterRip

    12. Re:project benefits by LetterRip · · Score: 1

      "Keep in mind the mentors approve the person.
      This is the same as if you hired a consultant for 3 months."

      Actually it isn't. A consultant interview allows a lot greater scope to explore the individuals background and experience. The SoC proposals it is really difficult to know in advance whether the individual has adequate skill or 'stick to it ness' to accomplish their goal.

      "The results you get from the students are a direct result of the support the mentor and the community around the project provide."

      While good mentoring and community support are valuable (indeed at Blender we have a strong system in place to help SoCers succeed) a lot of what will determine whether the student will succeed is what the student brings to the table in terms of their internal motivation and core coding abilities as well as their willingness to commit time to the project. Other factors are that the project scope was adequately narrow so that the inevitable unforeseen difficulties don't result in the project failing (a lot of projects that were successful on paper, but that haven't made it into the main tree are of this nature).

      "Also a large influence is the students ability to take advantage of both the community and the mentor. But this is hopefully less an issue as the mentor gets to chose the student."

      They get to choose the 'project', there often isn't much that the mentoring organization knows beyond the proposal quality. With 100s of proposals there are a number that are great on paper, but that the proposer doesn't have the capability to accomplish the goal.

      LetterRip

    13. Re:project benefits by RLaager · · Score: 1

      I'm a Gaim developer. This should be taken as my opinion, not as some statement from "the Gaim project". Certainly I don't claim to speak for other developers, though their opinions are likely to be similar.

      While I wish 2.0.0 "final" was out, the fact that it's called a "beta" is really irrelevant to everyone except plugin writers. Effectively, it's out, but we're not guaranteeing source/binary compatibility. I realize this is very sub-optimal, and I really want to see a 2.0.0 final soon as well. But, the lack of a 2.0.0 final is completely unrelated to SoC. Hopefully we'll actually have a 2.0.0 final release out soon, but I can't guarantee that.

      We've seen a lot of good code from SoC, and some not-quite-perfect code. Having not-quite-perfect code is certainly no worse than having no code at all (as long as one doesn't merge code that's not ready), and the fact that someone took a stab at the problem can provide valuable information.

      The SoC students are not responsible for Gaim releases. The developers determine which SoC code gets merged into the main line. Please don't blame the SoC students as a group for the failings of others/some. It's true that some SoC students didn't finish their feature, which you could attempt to consider a "product". Sometimes that was their fault and sometimes it wasn't. The important thing is that hopefully most of the students learned something. If the projects get some benefit out of their work, then it's even better. If Google was primarily interested in features being added, etc., they could pay existing developers to do the work and get a lot more "bang for their buck".

      With regard to specific features or other work... It's open source. If you want feature X implemented or improved, then do it. That's how I got started with Gaim. I wanted to improve the behavior of the log viewer to make it easier for me to use in a specific case. If you're not a programmer right now, there's no time like the present to learn. If you don't want to program or really just can't (since it does take a certain type of person), then sponsor a bounty on the feature.

      Finally, I don't know where you got this "hearsay". The lack of voice and video support is not due to SoC changes. There exists gaim-vv code and gaim-farsight code for some protocols, but not for all. So, depending on which protocol you're talking about, the code simply may not exist. The code that does exist needs to be merged into Gaim in some way that'll allow for voice and video to be added for other protocols later. It's very important that the APIs have a good design, especially since our (non-beta) releases come with API/ABI compatibility guarantees.

      In a more general sense, the problem with voice and video is that the intersection of people with desire to have it, people with time to code it, and people with the ability to code it is very small. For instance, I mainly lack the time, but also desire other features above voice and video. Others would like voice and video but aren't coders. I know that at least one Gaim developer has expressed interest in writing some -vv support, but for him it might be a lack of time. Also, at one time, GStreamer didn't have the capabilities we needed, but that is probably not the case any more.

      If you have more specific questions, please pop by #gaim on irc.freenode.net, and we'd be glad to answer. I don't want to start a flame war here. I hope my tone comes across properly in this written medium, but in any case, my desire is to inform.

    14. Re:project benefits by TheoMurpse · · Score: 1

      I don't want to start a flame war here. I hope my tone comes across properly in this written medium, but in any case, my desire is to inform.
      You succeeded quite well, and I'll attempt to be as courteous to you when answering your questions.

      First, I want to preface this entire post with a thank-you, because I appreciate all development work that goes into gaim and don't want to make anyone think their work goes unnoticed or unappreciated. In any case, here I go...

      October 12, 2005, Gaim news page - "On a related note, the gaim-vv projectwhich aimed to offer a framework for voice and video support in Gaimis being merged back into Gaim proper for hopeful incorporation into Gaim 2.0.0. This will be used to support Google Talk's voice as well as MSN and Yahoo! webcams."

      A couple months later, I went on the IRC forums curious as to why there hadn't been any update of gaim with these features. I was told by someone that one of the SoC programmers had changed the codebase so much that the gaim-vv guys were not able to incorporate the video and voice anymore, and no one wanted to try to make it work. A few months later, on January 24, 2006, we were treated to a news update which seemed to corroborate what I was told: "Gaim 2.0.0 beta 2 does not include voice or video ("vv") support for any protocols. We've done some work toward vv compatibility for Google Talk, but it isn't ready for the general public yet. It is unlikely this will change for the final release of Gaim 2.0.0, but vv will be a primary focus for the next major release of Gaim after that." Over a year later, and there still has not been the major release that's supposed to be the major release before the one that potentially would herald vv support.

      So, in summation: vv support was tentatively "promised" for 2.0. Then it doesn't show up, and I ask why on freenode/#gaim, and I'm told that a SoC intern screwed stuff up so much that no one wanted to devote the time to getting vv to work (because the codebase of gaim and gaim-vv was at that point so different because of the SoC changes. Then a news update comes up saying that in the next major release (after v2) of gaim, vv might show up. Over a year later, v2 isn't even out yet.

      Presumably, people have donated money to the project in hopes (or in expectance) of getting vv support in their favorite client.

      I understand that most people work on gaim in their spare time for fun. My main gripe is the broken vv semi-promise, and that news updates are extremely few and far between. I guess perhaps I got spoiled back when gaim had a new non-beta release practically every 2 months. Could you suggest to whoever does the news updates to, say, post a news update once a month, even if it's nothing more than "nothing new"? I'm sure gaim would gain more mindshare, and perhaps more developers, if it seemed at first glance that gaim hadn't stagnated (I know it hasn't, but people just checking the site might think so if they afford it merely a cursory glance).
    15. Re:project benefits by RLaager · · Score: 1

      Well, someone was working on merging the -vv stuff, and Sean was working on Google Talk voice support, but it turned out the toolkit we wanted to use (GStreamer) wasn't ready enough.

      As for infrequent news updates, yes, that's been a problem. Hopefully that will be improving very soon.

      As for donations... currently we don't accept donations at all. I'd like to see that change in the future so that we could have resources to pay for some development work, but I'm not entirely sure what framework would be appropriate. (Things *can*, but don't always have to, get complex if some people are getting paid and others aren't.)

  5. Goddamit, I give up! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Just who the fuck are we hating this week? Whenever I think I've got it, you bastards post another "Google/Microsoft is Good/Evil" story, and I'm lost all over again.

  6. Summer? by ChipMonk · · Score: 1, Funny

    Did Google move to Australia?

    1. Re:Summer? by martin-boundary · · Score: 3, Funny

      Did Google move to Australia?
      No, it's global warming. Soon, you'll notice it too.
    2. Re:Summer? by strider44 · · Score: 1

      Yes, and they plan to compress the entire Summer of Code into the next two weeks. Get cracking students!

  7. The best metric by Per+Abrahamsen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The best metric for the success of the project on the host side will probably be how many host organizations reapply next year.

    It is worth remembering that the student isn't the only one who learns from a student/mentor relationship. The mentor will know a lot more about how the problem can (or cannot) be solved after the project, this way the student implementation would act as a prototype.

  8. Apple by iMac+Were · · Score: 0, Funny

    In other news, Apple have responded with bummer of code.

    --
    You thought my name meant what? How very dare you!
  9. High School by koreaman · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Is this open to high school students as well?

    --
    Le français vous intéresse?
    1. Re:High School by Deltaspectre · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, sadly, unless they changed it from last year. You have to be 18 by the time of application deadlines. :(

      --
      My UID is prime... is yours?
    2. Re:High School by Nicholas+Bishop · · Score: 1

      Actually, you don't have to be in college, so long as you've been accepted to one (and you must be 18, of course.)

  10. Summer ... global warming by extern_void · · Score: 2, Funny

    Soon, google will lunch "google summer code" everyday, because everyday will be summer.

  11. Exactly! by jeffmeden · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is just what I was going to say. This time around, google, PLEEEEASE put someone good on GAIM!!! Not that it's bad software, and I know that if I want it to improve I should shut up and fix it, but it would be nice to hear about SoC working for this project for once.

    1. Re:Exactly! by Nicholas+Bishop · · Score: 1

      Google doesn't decide which students work for a particular project; the students apply to whatever project they want, and that project's administrators rank the proposals. The only thing Google decides is how many students each project gets to 'hire'.

  12. summer o' CAML by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://osp2007.janestcapital.com/
    OCaml Summer Project

    1. Re:summer o' CAML by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hehe... that's funny. OCaml is a FRENCH project. It's developed by INRIA for crissakes. It's funnay to the max that cutthroat republicans like Jane Street Capital are cooperating with the french. Oh, what's that? They'll cooperate with anyone as long as they make a killing. That's for sure.

  13. Guapums (c) Jim Jones by Southphillyman · · Score: 1

    How much money is given for this? Also what are the requirements if any? I never even heard of this Summer of Code......I must not be in the know!!!!

  14. Am I the only one who thought of... by inviolet · · Score: 1

    GEORGE: Severance package...The Yankees are giving me three months full pay for doing nothing.

    JERRY: They did it for three years. What's another few months.

    GEORGE: I'm really going to do something with these three months.

    JERRY: Like what?

    GEORGE: I'm gonna read a book. From beginning to end. In that order.

    JERRY: I've always wanted to do that...

    GEORGE: I'm gonna play frolf.

    JERRY: You mean golf?

    GEORGE: Frolf, frisbee golf Jerry. Golf with a frisbee. This is gonna be my time. Time to taste the fruits and let the juices drip down my chin. I proclaim this: The Summer of George!

    --
    FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
  15. Don't discriminate... by rolandog · · Score: 1

    against photophobics, you insensitive clod!

  16. ROAR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why are there once again no god damn projects in scientific computing? This completely shuts SoC off to traditional engineers. Stupid Google.

    1. Re:ROAR by gstein · · Score: 1

      Because we didn't know of good, Open Source scientific computing projects and/or they did not send us email to ask to participate.

      This year, we have an application process to make it easier for projects that we're not familiar with to apply. If you have some pet projects that you'd like to participate in GSoC, then ask them to apply in a couple weeks when we open it up. It is up to them to apply.

  17. Better name... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Google [...] Summer of Code [...] Nice job, Google.
    Google and Summer's Awesome Code, Great Job!
  18. Re:Project standards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They turned down a proposal for slashcode, that's a good start.

  19. When Winter of code? by ghostbar38 · · Score: 1

    And Google code of warmed season, and so on. Google code of Tsunamis season, very soon! :)

    Anyway, good idea of Google, but maybe they shouldn't limit the age for participating... :/

    --
    ghostbar page.
    1. Re:When Winter of code? by gstein · · Score: 1

      When you come up with a good way to pay minors in 93 different countries, then let me know. Until then, we've had to limit it to adults (i.e. 18 years or older).

      Seriously... paying the students and handling the taxes associated with that is one of the most difficult aspects of GSoC. First year was a mess. Last year was better, but far from ideal. This year, we have some ideas for improving further.

  20. Re:Project standards by Southphillyman · · Score: 0, Redundant

    lol

  21. SOC 2007idea for multilingual OLPC by wixi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    plug: if you know any CS students looking for an idea to win Google SOC 2007, check out a multilingual wiki app for the OLPC: http:/wiki.laptop.org/go/WiXi .. project has OLPC approval if student provides qualified mentor.. languages: python, javascript..

  22. Pictures people, we need pictures by pbhj · · Score: 1

    The voice of Comic-book[store]-guy from the Simpsons came to me saying "pictures people, we need pictures" in response to your post .... so ....