Google's Summer of Code wraps for 2006

With a new web-based tracking system and more mentors, Google's Summer of Code supported open source software development for more than 100 projects.

LinuxWorld.com, 09/28/06

 Start a discussion    Print article

 Comments (1)    Print article

The 2006 season of the Google's $3 million open source student development program is drawing to a close, with some of the resulting software already released as part of widely used open source projects.

A total of 630 student developers from 90 countries took on software projects for 102 different open source projects as part of Google's "Summer of Code", said Leslie Hawthorn, the project coordinator. Last year's Summer of Code involved Last year's 400 developers from 40 countries, and 41 software projects. At last count, the final success rate was 82%, which is more than double the 37% success rate that a 2004 Standish Group study cited for corporate application development projects.

Summer of Code, which was open only to enrolled students age 18 and up, was intended to "get students involved in coding and other computer science activities over the summer," Hawthorn said. Each student received a $4500 stipend, and the open source project to which the student contributed received $500.

The project has resulted in one new employee for Google, and several new interns, said Google's Open Source program manager Chris DiBona. A total of 1260 developers from open source projects acted as mentors for Summer of Code, Hawthorn said. Some paired up on student projects, others acted as backup for when primary mentors were unavailable, and some reviewed incoming applications.

Both software projects and students proposed Summer of Code project ideas, DiBona said. Google used a custom-developed web application to support the project's information-gathering needs. "Last year we had a very simple web app, this year we did everything," he said. Google provided the infrastructure for posting proposals, ranking them, and administering evaluations and payments. Google made the final choices on which projects were accepted.

The Summer of Code application runs not on an ordinary SQL database, but on BigTable, Google's internal large-scale database that also powers the Subversion repository for Google's software project hosting site.

Featured Whitepapers

LinuxCast Listen to the latest Linux news.

About Us | Contact Us | Advertising Info | Terms of Service/Privacy

Copyright, 2006-2007 Network World, Inc. All rights reserved.