Google Launches Summer of Code 2007

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."

Re:project benefits

[Anonymous Coward]

The only SoC project I've been following is freenet [freenetproject.org], 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.

Re:Not helping the problem...

[edschurr]

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).

Re:High School

[Deltaspectre]

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

Re:project benefits

[webchickenator]

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. :)