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/."

About the IRC channel

[aCapitalist]

Wouldn't it make more sense to be hosting it over at freenode? I have nothing against slashnet, but there's probably more coding discussion going on over there than any other irc network.

Re:About the IRC channel

[chrisd]

It isn't really about Freenode, but I'm used to being on slashnet. So there you go.

Chris

Re:About the IRC channel

[aCapitalist]

It isn't really about Freenode, but I'm used to being on slashnet. So there you go.

It's not about slashnet either. My point was that most of the "coding discussion" is going on at freenode and not slashnet. It's not a big deal either way.

Re:HEY EVERYONE LOOK IT'S CHRIS DIBONA

[aCapitalist]

I found it hilarious too.

Re:About the IRC channel

[Colde]

Yeah, that would be nice. Not so much for the increase in coding discussion, but because unrealircd has quite a few spy on the users features that i would like to be without.

Re:About the IRC channel

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

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?

Re:About the IRC channel

[Jonas56]

What spy features would those be? The only spy feature UnrealIRCd had was usermode +I, which allowed opers to be invisible in channels, but that mode was removed from UnrealIRCd a long time ago while 3.2 was still in beta. Yeah, sure, you could write a module or something to add spy features, but then again you could modify any IRCd to add spy features, so I don't really see how that's relevant.

Re:About the IRC channel

[lintux]

It used to be there, but I'm more than glad they moved off. The problem with FeeNode [feenode.net] is that it's operated by someone who thinks he can make people pay him for sending wallops [fleenode.net] and causing netsplits every day. I wish more people would decide to leave that playground, so I can only thank Google and/or chrisd for making this switch!

Re:About the IRC channel

[geoaxis]

agreed, but a side effect of being on slashnet is that its the biggest channel on shalshnet.

Dear Students,

[Dear Students]

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.

Re:Dear Students,

[SeaFox]

You have years of 'summers of code' ahead - at your job. Try something else while you have the chance.

Yes, but those summers of coding will be heavily deadline driven and for projects one probably doesn't want to work on that much. Whereas a 'Summer of Code' is more about working on something of personal interest and learning. It's more a workshop than a day-job.

Re:Dear Students,

[Noishe]

Yes, students, spend your summer working in a greasy McDonalds getting the worlds largest pimple collection, instead of spending it doing something fun and challenging with flexible hours and working from home while doing something good for the state of humanity.

Re:Dear Students,

[VJ42]

On the other hand, it's good practice, and if you do well it looks great on your CV

Re:Dear Students,

[__aaclcg7560]

Doing some crappy wage-slave job will not help you.

Not directly. Having resturant work experience can be helpful if you find yourself needing a temporary job while looking for something better during a recession. Otherwise, you might find yourself cleaning toliets after your unemployment benefits run out in six months.

Re:Dear Students,

[flynt]

I was with you until "McDonald's".

Re:Dear Students,

[someone300]

Summer of code:
- Working on something you enjoy
- Possibility of getting 4500 USD personally and 500 USD for your favourite OSS project
- Doing something that will benefit at least one person somewhere else in the world, if not many thousands.
- Practice for future job probably
- Something reasonably unique to put on CV

McDonalds
- Boring, hot, horrid job
- Shit money
- Further perpetuating the problem of obesity and heart problems by providing overweight middle aged men and women and their kids, for whom they can't be bothered to cook a nutritious meal, with their daily dose of fatty dead animal
- Time spent doing repetitive tasks that require no skill or thought
- Just another generic teenage job to put on your CV, if mentioned at all

Re:Dear Students,

[numbware]

Slashdot: The only place the normal people stay in the dark and the trolls want daylight.

Seeing as that's the case, I'll stay normal. :)

Re:Dear Students,

[Tweekster]

You sir have no idea what you are talking about.. you are encouraging them to work fast food, you are an idiot for that. The only reason to ever work fast food is so you realize you never want to work fast food. They obviousely dont, they found something better. Just cause you wasted your summers doing shit jobs, dont expect other people to do so also

Re:Dear Students,

[nEoN nOoDlE]

I think you forgot how competitive the software development market is when you just come out of school. It's those people that have experience doing stuff like the summer of code that are going to get jobs after school, not the guy who worked at McDonalds because he felt that he'd never get the chance once he starts real work.

Re:Dear Students,

[HappyEngineer]

Get a job working outside

First off, only losers go outside.

When in college I spent my summers coding. I'm glad I did. The enjoyment I got then was almost as great as the enjoyment I get now from writing code (a decade later).

Re:Dear Students,

[labratuk]

I hear what you're saying, but it's likely that this fun project that you choose to work on will be the most used piece of code you ever write in your career.

Re:Dear Students,

[It'sYerMam]

If you're going to do CS, don't even bother listening to this guy. You get out of University, and all the job offers are asking for experience. I don't think they mean experience in McDonalds. Summer of Code is a way to make a quick buck, doing something fun and challenging that will look hella good on a CV or application. I don't see any negative points except for the effort required...

Re:Dear Students,

[hritcu]

I don't see any negative points except for the effort required...

Unless you are lazy this shouldn't be a problem either.

Re:Dear Students,

[It'sYerMam]

We're discussing students here, there's a high possibility.

Re:Dear Students,

[JanneM]

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.

Of course, once you graduate you compete for jobs with people that did things like Summer of Code or interned at future employers rather than pulling weeds or slinging burgers. Which means that those burger-cooking skills might come in handy after

Re:Dear Students,

[Alioth]

I always thought it was odd how Google would have summers of code. I thought it'd make much more sense to have a "Winter of Code" instead - do it when the weather is bad for most of the population, rather than when the weather is good. I suppose if you live in the southern hemisphere it'll be a winter of code though.

Re:Dear Students,

[__aaclcg7560]

I guess I could take out loans but I would need a GED before I could even think about going to college, and having to take that stupid test is just an insult.

You should find out if your community college will take you without a high school diploma. California law requires that any who is 18 years old or older and can benefit from learning the community college has to accept them. I never went to high school. It took me four years going full time to get an associate degree versus the five years it would'v

Just What I was Hoping For.

[WeAzElMaN]

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.

What happened to all last years projects?

[SeaFox]

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.

Re:What happened to all last years projects?

[gstein]

http://code.google.com/soc-results.html [google.com]

Re:What happened to all last years projects?

[Sdoh]

Happened to work with one of the products of last "Summer of Code" (no fingerpointing). Raw, unfinished, bad coding, no docs. Ended up delegating it to one of my friends in one of the 3rd world country. He wrote it from scratch in 4 weeks for $300.

I guess the value of "Summer of Code" is mostly educational.

Re:What happened to all last years projects?

[pablodiazgutierrez]

If you did that and got the money from Google, you've just put those $4500 in risk by publicly admitting not having done the job yourself.

Re:What happened to all last years projects?

[renoX]

Well one example doesn't mean that every entry are like this.
I know that when I was a student, the quality of my code wasn't good..

Re:What happened to all last years projects?

[bradkittenbrink]

Actually, the proper link is http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=soc+results&b tnI=I'm+Feeling+Lucky [google.com]

Re:What happened to all last years projects?

[yogikoudou]

Miguel de Icaza, founder of the Mono project, made a blog post yesterday about the state of the SoC projects for Mono : http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2006/Apr-13.html [tirania.org]
11 projects out of 16 were continued, 6 students still being involved in Mono today.

The Mozilla project had far less chance : None of the 10 projects are alive as of today : http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/2006/ 03/summer_of_code_six_months_on.html [mozillazine.org]

I guess they'll be more carefull about the motivations of the people the choose this year...

Re:What happened to all last years projects?

[m50d]

I wonder if that's anything to do with how "nice" the respective codebases are. Mono is new and so (one would hope) relatively clean, while Mozilla has a reputation for being quite horrible. And this is IME the most important factor in how enjoyable it is to work on a particular project.

Re:What happened to all last years projects?

[sconeu]

Chris talked about it at SCALE back in Feb. Great talk, by the way, Chris.

Re:What happened to all last years projects?

[chrisd]

Thanks! That's a really great conference.

Re:What happened to all last years projects?

[charlesnw]

Yep it was. I was there. Had a booth and spoke.

Re:What happened to all last years projects?

[Vorondil28]

Voice/Video support for Gaim was one of the Summer of Code projects last year

No it wasn't. http://gaim.sourceforge.net/summerofcode/ [sourceforge.net]

While gaim has been working toward voice and video support, that's been up the the gaim-vv fork. Their work has been dumped back into the main 2.x.y development tree. The framework for voice and video is currently in the 2.0.0 betas, but it's not been enabled yet.

HTH

The Sunlight it Burns

[Soporific]

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

Re:The Sunlight it Burns

[Noishe]

work at night and spend the day at the beach maybe?

Autumn of This Content

[Doc Ruby]

Maybe I blinked and missed it, but I never saw a simple list of the successfully delivered SoC2005 projects. Where are they? Where will the 2006 projects be reported when they're delivered?

Re:Autumn of This Content

[Doc Ruby]

Use my .sig :). You'll have to decide whether to revise it to "make install --not-war" or "--not war", as frequently requested. If you do, you'll have to publish the changes ;).

Re:Summer of Code 2005 was teh fail

[nanop]

It seems that the mono project had better results: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2006/Apr-13.html [tirania.org]

• 3 projects never completed (QNX, CIL C++ extensions, XSLT compiler).
• 2 projects half-done, and the resulting code is not very useful (Ruby.NET and GCC CIL).
• 11 projects that were completed to our satisfaction (Cecil/write support, MSBuild implementation, ASP.NET GUI designer, bug finder, XAML Compiler, Diva Video Editor, PHP Compiler for .NET, Monodoc improvements, Windows.Forms' DataGridView and JScript

Re:Summer of Code 2005 was teh fail

[noneme]

Was the point to produce full-fledged software or to give students a chance to learn more? If google wanted finished and functional software, I'm sure they'd hire the experts to get it done in time. The point of the summer of code is to grant computer science students the opportunity to do something in their field for a summer job instead of flipping burgers.

So before you call the Summer of Code a failure, question what the student workers _learned_ instead of how many stable releases they built.

...can only be measured in relation to the goal

[wysiwia]

So before you call the Summer of Code a failure ...

Failure can only be measured in relation to the goal. So I'd say:

• It was a failure to attract students not already accustomed to OpenSource. All the outsiders who got involved left after they have finished their projects.
• There where some good results most probably by submitters already accustomed to OpenSource as users or even developers.
• I guess there wasn't much permanent code simply because participants were overwhelmed by having to get familiar wi

Nmap project was a great success

[fv]

What will GOOG do to stop the same outright shambles this time round?

The page [mozillazine.org] 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 [insecure.org] 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:

• Doug Hoyte nearly tripled the size of the version detection database, and added OS/device type/hostname detection using the version detection DB. He made numerous other improvements as well.
• Zhao Lei added more than 350 OS detection fingerprints to Nmap, bringing the total to 1684. He also helped design a 2nd generation OS detection (stack fingerprinting) system [seclists.org].
• Adriano Monteiro designed and implemented an advanced Nmap GUI and results viewer named UMIT [sourceforge.net] (screenshots [sourceforge.net]).
• Ole Morten Grodaas designed and implemented another advanced Nmap GUI and results viewer (its nice to have choices in open source!) named NmapGUI. Details and download here [seclists.org])
• Chris Gibson has written a sweet little network tool named Ncat [seclists.org], which takes the venerable Netcat in an interesting and extremely useful direction with features such as connection brokering, socks proxying, and much more.
• Paul Tarjan added the runtime interaction [insecure.org] feature to Nmap. While Nmap is running, you can now press 'v' to increase verbosity, 'd' to increase the debugging level, 'p' to enable packet tracing, or the capital versions (V,D,P) to do the opposite. Any other key (such as enter) will print out a status message giving the estimated time until scan completion.

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 [insecure.org]

Re:Nmap project was a great success

[qualico]

nmap rocks!

Glad to see improvements from any source.
Please mod this up.

That's convenient.

[dominion]

I guess that answers my question [slashdot.org].

For some reason I had heard that it wasn't happening this year. I'm excited that it is.

Re:That's convenient.

[dominion]

Wait, spoke too soon. I didn't realize that it was only available to students.

Back to the drawing board...

Maybe Summer of Code is too narrow?

[Anonymous Coward]

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 [google.com]. I mean, I've seen a lot more people complain about gaim's instability than its lack of a "music messaging" [sourceforge.net] feature =P.

Re:Maybe Summer of Code is too narrow?

[kevin_conaway]

Interesting point. Gaim (or Glib 2.8, it doesn't matter to me) is incompatible with Glib 2.8 on Windows. This bug has existed for a long time and is extremely frustrating for developers who want to release software that uses Glib 2.8 on Windows.

Re:Maybe Summer of Code is too narrow?

[TheRaven64]

One of the FreeBSD SoC[1] projects was a redesign of the website. Some HTML 'coding' was required, but no serious hacking. There's no requirement that the SoC projects have to be deep coding.

[1] By the way, I really hate that acronym. Too much confusion with System on Chip.

Help students first, open source second

[Per Abrahamsen]

Their primary goal [google.com] is to nourish a new generation of developers. Helping free software projects is only a secondary goal.

Of course, developers need to be able to document too, but if a project is solely documentation, it is really a new generation of technical writers they are nourishing.

A bit distasteful

[Umbral Blot]

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).

Re:A bit distasteful

[pclminion]

How is programming on Linux any different from programming on Windows, Mac, etc? The APIs might be different, but that's just the grease, not the axle. And you've always got the standard library to fall back on.

Re:A bit distasteful

[Umbral Blot]

Because not all developers run Linus obviously, or have a Mac. Some of us use Windows. For example I use Windows because of 1- games 2- Visual Studio 3 - Linux doesn't have drivers for all my hardware.

Re:A bit distasteful

[JohnFluxx]

Google run this partly as a recruitment program. Why on earth would they want to recruit someone who can't even get linux running on his machine?

Re:A bit distasteful

[Umbral Blot]

Damn, can't write my own drivers, I must suck as a programmer!

Re:A bit distasteful

[JohnFluxx]

Which drivers do you need?

Re:A bit distasteful

[pembo13]

I'm sorry you feel that way :)

Then Write a Proposal...

[Anonymous Coward]

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, Per

What do you mean "Linux oriented" ?

[Krunch]

At least NetBSD and FreeBSD where mentors last year. I'm not even sure "Linux" was really a mentor.

Oh so close...

[masterzora]

This is something I was hoping to do. Certainly better pay and more fun than my current job! Unfortunately, I fall short on a _single_ eligibility requirement: age.

Oh well, there's always next year.

Re:Oh so close...

[Narishma]

Well, it obviously means that he is too young...

Re:Oh so close...

[Per Abrahamsen]

A clue might be that US$ 4500 for three months is better paid than his current job...

If you think about applying...

[shalunov]

...please take a look at my little piece on grading proposals Summer of Code 2005 [internet2.edu] written after the students who made it were selected.

I feel left out

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, they still have the silly restriction as last year. What about us around age 18-22 who are not yet in university because we have taken a year of in mums basement - so we can work on our own projects?

Re:I feel left out

[i.of.the.storm]

Or those under 18? I can dream, can't I?

Re:I feel left out

[Breakfast Pants]

If you've already taken a year to work on your own projects, and have parents who will support that, you don't need Google. Also, Google's money is probably best spent on people who aren't so lucky.

I Fully Support Summer of Code...

[saridder]

...If its just an intern program for the younger generation, that great! But from an output perspective, what have we received from it? Is it worth the hype?

SoC is a great program

[damg]

I'm glad that they want to improve FOSS in this way, even for many projects that will probably never benefit Google directly. For example, anyone that uses Blender for animation would definitely say that last year's SoC project to add fluids simulation is an awesome feature: http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Fluids_simulation.675 .0.html [blender3d.org]

Winter of code?

[miro f]

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"

Just sent them a request yesterday...

[Lando]

Wow, that's weird. I just sent in a request yesterday asking if I could work on something for a thesis paper. Now, less than 24 hours later... Nice of them to create the program after I sent the mail yesterday... Grin

Terms of Service

[McFadden]

Dunno if you're still checking this ChrisD, but you have a small typo in your terms of service just before the word "Iran".

Forgive my pedantry.

Yet another way to make SoC more useful

[wysiwia]

You all may know that OpenSource isn't much loved by the ordinary users because of a range of reasons. The OSDL survey ( http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005 .pdf [osdl.org]) shows that even the majority of the Linux users wish for Windows-Only applications. Novell's cool solution website (http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/16798 .html [novell.com]) proves that their users (customers) prefer Windows-Only applications. And the thread at LinuxQuestions.org (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthrea d.php [linuxquestions.org]

Re:Yet another way to make SoC more useful

[Tweekster]

could you just go away. thank you

jobs?

[portscan]

just curious, but does anyone know if there are any programmers who performed well in their summer of code projects and were subsequently offered jobs at google? i know google was (is) trying to curry favor with the open source community, but i expect they were also scouting talent to some extent as well.

NetBSD project suggestions

[jschauma]

NetBSD [netbsd.org] is once again going to be a mentoring organization. A number of project ideas is available here [netbsd.org], though applicants can (and should) of course also come up with their own ideas.

Re:Cheaper than outsourceing to India

[xoran99]

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.

Re:Cheaper than outsourceing to India

[damiam]

What are you talking about? SOC participants get paid $4500.

Re:Cheaper than outsourceing to India

[eviloverlordx]

alter table damiam 'insert into get_humor (sarcasm, hyperbole, irony) values (1, 1, 1);';

Re:Cheaper than outsourceing to India

[damiam]

The problem with the Internet is that sometimes humor is just plain lost. I think I have a fairly good appreciation of humor and sarcasm, and reading over your original post, I still don't see it. Since you've been modded down, apparently most mods don't see it either. It seems the words you wrote don't effectively convey the idea you were thinking.

Re:Cheaper than outsourceing to India

[eviloverlordx]

Yeah. One person's 'funny as hell' is another's 'huh?'

Re:Cheaper than outsourceing to India

[davidesh]

I fail to see the humor as well... made no sense. May want to work on that.