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Google Announces Summer of Code 2008 Projects

Posted by kdawson on from the fifteen-point-eight-percent dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google announced today it had accepted 1,125 students to work on 175 Free and Open Source Projects this summer. This represents an increase of almost 25% over last year. Nearly 7,100 applications were received. For those who weren't accepted, there is an offer to send Google Swag to any student who completes their project anyway."

35 comments

  1. Is it wrong... by CSMatt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...that I hate Google for their immense privacy violations, and yet can't help but get excited when the Summer of Code comes up?

    1. Re:Is it wrong... by zappepcs · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I understand your concerns over this. There is a very fine line between privacy violations and getting just enough data about user's activities to have useful data for developing other things that are immensely useful.

      When collected, if the data is stripped of any identifying information I believe that there are hundreds of useful ways to use that data. Google trends is one of those ways. So I teeter on the fence about Google's treatment of personally identifying information. I hope that the 'don't be evil' motto runs deep enough through the company that they actually don't, yet still give the rest of the world such useful tools. The Internet is fucking awesome.

      Think of it, just 20 years ago it would be very hard to find some information that is freely available in your home now, never mind how difficult it would have been to find out the number of other users who had viewed that material in a given time period.

      NOTE: The word 'useful' was not harmed in the making of this post.

      --
      Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
    2. Re:Is it wrong... by linux+pickle · · Score: 1

      Is Google really that much worse than any other major internet company? Compare to MSN/Live or Yahoo - I don't see any major difference in terms of privacy policies.

      Care to prove me wrong?

    3. Re:Is it wrong... by eln · · Score: 3, Informative

      Even if every other company is evil, it's still not okay to be evil. "Everyone else does it" is not a valid defense.

    4. Re:Is it wrong... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Which Google service are you referring to? If you're referring to several, pick a few and share your concerns. I've heard so many people rattle on about "Google's immense privacy violations" but I've never heard anyone back it up with facts.

    5. Re:Is it wrong... by nog_lorp · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Parent is quite right in my opinion. The worst I've heard of from Google (in terms of privacy - Chinese relations are another issue) was analyzing emails and displaying apropos advertisements. Without logging them. To which I say, if you are embarrassed by computer programs reading your emails, talk to a psychiatrist. ~nog_lorp

    6. Re:Is it wrong... by nguy · · Score: 3, Informative

      ...that I hate Google for their immense privacy violations

      I'm sorry, but what are you referring to? You don't have to give them any personal information to use their services. Almost anything is opt-in with Google.

      Just about the only thing that's opt-out is their advertising and Google Analytics, but you can opt out of that fairly easily, too; Google doesn't try to track people who don't want to get tracked.

    7. Re:Is it wrong... by LingNoi · · Score: 1

      Some people hate the email reading thing, but I find the ads on gmail sometimes extremely helpful at times I want to look at something new. For example I clicked on one the other day about booking flights relevant to where I actually wanted to go.

  2. I wonder what improvements we'll see by IBBoard · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The interesting ones for me are:

    It'll be interesting to see how they are integrated and how big a change some of those items become at the other end of SoC.
  3. Interesting to see... by dragonquest · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Interesting to see that on the Projects listing page, the only Project/Organisation not having listed ideas which could be worked upon - Google!

    --
    "Never try to tell everything you know. It may take too short a time."
  4. Google Summer of Code 2008 by What+Would+NPH+Do · · Score: 4, Interesting
    This is the only real thing I'm interested in. http://code.google.com/soc/2008/ffmpeg/appinfo.html?csaid=9FD2BF705A5D5DBB

    Title Generic frame-level multithreading support
    Student Alexander James Lloyd Strange
    Mentor kristian Jerpetjoen
    Abstract
    FFmpeg, while equalling or surpassing the speed of nearly all other codec implementations on a single CPU core, currently only has limited and specific support for multithreading. I will implement a frame-level multithreading system, which can efficiently speed up all uses of libavcodec. This will be based on the successful implementation in the x264 encoder[1], extended to support decoding and whatever synchronization will be required. [1] http://akuvian.org/src/x264/sliceless_threads.txt, http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=442&pgno=0

    1. Re:Google Summer of Code 2008 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm glad you like it. I think I talk too much, though, so I'm not going to discuss it until it's at least partially done.

  5. Good luck! by Seakip18 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Good luck guys! Don't forget the crucial "Ballmer Peak" when getting started. http://xkcd.com/323/

    I had applied and got some very positive comments on my proposal but none of the project guys would mentor me due to time constraints or lack of knowledge in the area I was coding.

    Mentor organizations, in the future, if you have a idea page, make sure there is a mentor behind every item. It was a pain emailing/harassing everyone just to get an answer if they'd mentor me. Not fun when the deadline was a day or so away.

    I am glad to hear that there is free swag if I do work on it though, so perhaps I'll give it a go anyways.

    --
    import system.cool.Sig;
    1. Re:Good luck! by vrmlguy · · Score: 2, Funny

      Good luck guys! Don't forget the crucial "Ballmer Peak" when getting started. http://xkcd.com/323/ I've never noticed it while programming, but the peak definitely exists when I'm bowling or playing golf. Initially I stink, but after a couple of beers I can do no wrong. With more alcohol, however, I rapidly make my starting performace look like the work of a genius. The people I'm playing with joke that could turn pro if I could figure out how to get an IV past the rules committee.
      --
      Nothing for 6-digit uids?
    2. Re:Good luck! by ClamIAm · · Score: 1

      My mom claims the same type of peak exists when you're tired. She told me a story about her days on a late-night bowling team. She'd head over to the bowling alley after her 3-11 PM work shift. The first couple games she'd be awesome, then would rapidly become very bad.

  6. Google is biased... by qmaqdk · · Score: 1

    Vim is there, but Emacs isn't!

    --
    My UID is prime. Hah!
    1. Re:Google is biased... by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Vim is there, but Emacs isn't!

      Emacs is already perfect.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    2. Re:Google is biased... by Megaweapon · · Score: 3, Funny

      Emacs is already perfect. I thought Google ran under Emacs.
      --
      I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
    3. Re:Google is biased... by prestomation · · Score: 1

      Emacs is already perfect. I thought Google ran under Emacs. Exactly. Didn't you know Google is puurrfect?
    4. Re:Google is biased... by Deltaspectre · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      My UID is prime too!

      --
      My UID is prime... is yours?
  7. I REALLY hope they can fix some of VideoLAN's flaw by samwh · · Score: 1

    There are a few that keep it from becoming a decent player -- namely, .ass and other subtitle rendering, and slow h264 decoding. Although I suppose that those problems are more of a problem with libavcodec -- thankfully ffmpeg is also part of the Summer of Code.

  8. Why fund mono? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    They'd be better off burning the money rather than funding Microsoft encroachment.

    1. Re:Why fund mono? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People often write code in languages such as Matlab. This is fine for prototyping, but for a robust application you switch to C (also Matlab is expensive and you might want folks without a license to make use of your work). C# on the other hand has garbage collection, a very helpful framework of classes, and most importantly it's very FAST. The speed is a huge factor since this is usually a big reason for coding in C. C# would be the ideal scripting language between matlab and C and with some classes for numerical work you could probably skip matlab altogether.

    2. Re:Why fund mono? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Because they are more interested in technological advancement than ideological wanking?

    3. Re:Why fund mono? by setagllib · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Mono's C# is extremely slow compared even to OpenJDK Java, saying nothing of finely optimised C. It would be very nice if modern optimisations could be brought over from OpenJDK to Mono, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

      --
      Sam ty sig.
    4. Re:Why fund mono? by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 1

      I don't normally feed the trolls [i]too[/i] much, but being able to work in a clean, cross-platform way with a solid language that's far better than Java immediately drew me to the CLR, and spreading the wider adoption of a Java alternative is why I applied to work for the Mono Project this summer. (And got accepted, too.)

      Unfuck your head, sir; there is no "Microsoft encroachment" with Mono; the tool is a good one, and you're being stupidly paranoid.

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
    5. Re:Why fund mono? by Directrix1 · · Score: 1

      I know this is probably nit picking, but when I saw that .exe attached to the end of my mono compiled test program, I quit using it. Mono, in and of itself, is not a sign of Microsoft encroaching on the Linux desktop. But Mono not going its own direction instead of endlessly trailing Microsoft's direction is. Mono should have taken what is standardized and run with it. Making a competing dev environment not just reimplementing yet another Microsoft environment.

      --
      Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
    6. Re:Why fund mono? by free+space · · Score: 2, Informative

      FWIW, Mono is not looking *only* for a reimplementation of Microsoft's libraries. Their public goal is to create a high productivity open source dev framework, not to neccessarily recreate every Microsoft library.

      And it shows,too: They created GTK# way before Winforms compatibitlity (even now, the Monodevelop IDE has GTK# Visual Design but no Winforms support yet). And they've created bindings for some Unix libraries; and there are Mono libraries (like Monoaddin) that have no Microsoft counterpart.

    7. Re:Why fund mono? by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 1

      I know this is probably nit picking, but when I saw that .exe attached to the end of my mono compiled test program, I quit using it.

      It's there to be compatible with Windows. Windows expects executables to end in .EXE, so Mono executables end in .EXE. How else would you do it? Are you that much of a zealot? That's not nitpicking, that's being stupid.

      But Mono not going its own direction instead of endlessly trailing Microsoft's direction is. Mono should have taken what is standardized and run with it. Making a competing dev environment not just reimplementing yet another Microsoft environment.

      Do you have any idea what you're talking about? Of course they're reimplementing Microsoft's libraries--how else do you get compatibility with already written programs? "Oh, we have a CLR implementation, but .NET programs won't run on it! Hurf durf, we're cool!"

      And Mono's got its own namespace with a boatload of features. GTK#, Cocoa#, Tao (the managed OpenGL/SDL bindings that people use on .NET, too--it started with Mono), the brilliant Mono.Addins, MonoCurses (which addresses a glaring deficiency in .NET, the lack of a decent console API), Mono.FUSE...I could go on. But I'm sure these libraries are OMG HORRIBLE, because I can use (most of) them in .NET too! OH NO!

      Get a clue.

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
  9. I still haven't forgiven them... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I still haven't forgiven them for the time they sent a bunch of acceptances in error and then had to reneg. I got one of those, and still hate Google.

  10. KDE won most projects with 47 by billybob2 · · Score: 2, Informative

    It looks like Google awarded KDE the most number of projects (47 total) of any SOC participant.

  11. Re:I REALLY hope they can fix some of VideoLAN's f by RiotingPacifist · · Score: 1

    Not crashing Firefox + Noscript would also be fairly important for me, although tbh ive moved to mplayer as its pretty much like vlx but more modular (in installation anyway)

    --
    IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
  12. The reason I got in... by crawdaddy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I attribute my proposal being accepted to the fact that I'm implementing a real-time web version of a game that makes my mentor (and probably other proposal-choosers for Portland State University) feel quite nostalgic.

    When I called him to initially discuss the idea, he actually cut me off mid-sentence and said--with Renee-Zellweger-like tearful joy in his voice--"You had me at 'Nomic'."