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Summer of Code 2006 is On 117

Posted by Zonk
from the go-make-a-name dept.
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/."
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Summer of Code 2006 is On More

Summer of Code 2006 is On

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  • 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.

  • Dear Students, (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Dear Students (968511)
    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, (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SeaFox (739806) on Friday April 14 2006, @03:18PM (#15132360)
      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, (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Noishe (829350)
      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, (Score:3, Interesting)

      by VJ42 (860241)
      On the other hand, it's good practice, and if you do well it looks great on your CV
    • I was with you until "McDonald's".

    • Re:Dear Students, (Score:5, Insightful)

      by someone300 (891284) on Friday April 14 2006, @03:48PM (#15132571)
      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
    • 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
    • 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.
    • 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).

    • 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, (Score:5, Insightful)

      by It'sYerMam (762418) <thefishface@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Friday April 14 2006, @06:46PM (#15133454) Homepage
      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, (Score:2, Interesting)

      by JanneM (7445)
      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
    • 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.
  • 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? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SeaFox (739806) on Friday April 14 2006, @03:16PM (#15132346)
    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.

  • The Sunlight it Burns (Score:5, Funny)

    by Soporific (595477) on Friday April 14 2006, @03:16PM (#15132349)
    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
  • 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?

  • 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.

  • Maybe Summer of Code is too narrow? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2006, @03:48PM (#15132564)
    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.
    • 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.
    • 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.

    • 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 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Umbral Blot (737704) on Friday April 14 2006, @03:55PM (#15132606) Homepage
    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).
    • 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.
    • I'm sorry you feel that way :)

    • Then Write a Proposal... (Score:3, Insightful)

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

  • Oh so close... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by masterzora (871343) <masterzora.gmail@com> on Friday April 14 2006, @03:56PM (#15132614) Homepage
    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.

  • If you think about applying... (Score:5, Informative)

    by shalunov (149369) on Friday April 14 2006, @03:59PM (#15132640) Homepage
    ...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 (Score:1, Interesting)

    by 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?
  • ...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?
  • 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? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by miro f (944325)
    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"
  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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]

  • 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 [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.

"How do I love thee? My accumulator overflows."