Google to sponsor students to write open source code

Stuart Corner
Friday, 09 March 2007 04:48

Business IT - Technology

Google is seeking applications from mentors and students worldwide for its third Google Summer of Code programme that pays college students to write open source software over their (Northern Hemisphere) summer vacation.

On successful completion of their software projects, students received $US4500 and their mentor $US500, and the mentor's company gets the intellectual property in any software developed (except if Google itself is the mentor, in which case the IP stays with the student).

Last year's Google Summer of Code brought 630 students from 90 countries together with 102 open source mentoring groups, including Ubuntu, Eclipse, Joomla! and Dojo. There were four mentors from Australia and nine students.

The programme is global, and very very competitive, according to Google Australia spokesman, Rob Shilkin. Australian applicants compete against all others for the available places and some of the Australian students were mentored by overseas organisations in the 2006 programme

"Mentoring is open to any organisation that has an open source project," Shilkin said. "Google will select those projects that it wants to support." Once the mentors and projects have been chosen by Google the mentors are responsible for selecting and monitoring students through to completion of their projects.

Google says its goal is to increase the world's supply of open source software while providing young programmers with inspiring, meaningful summer jobs. "Several of our past students are still contributing to their projects, and many will serve as mentors this year," Google said. "One former student now sits on the board of directors of the Drupal Association; still others have become Google employees."

Applications from mentors close on March 12; the application period for students runs from March 14 to March 24. Coding must be completed by August 20. More details at http://code.google.com/soc/