Summer of Code Now Taking Student Applications

chrisd writes "Just wanted to let you know that we've opened up the student application process for the Summer of Code. We've signed up ~100 mentoring organizations this year, including Apache, Postgres, Xiph, The Shmoo Group, Drupal, Gallery and many others. We're accepting applications through May 8th this year."

Freenet also participating in SoC

[Sanity]

The Freenet [freenetproject.org] project is also looking for students, please take a look here [freenetproject.org] for more information. Our new Freenet Client Protocol spec [freenetproject.org] makes it very easy to build applications on top of the new Freenet 0.7 "darknet" architecture.

ffmpeg, nice!

[Psionicist]

It was a nice surprise to see FFmpeg in there, these guys, while largely unknown, deserve some _serious_ credits for their work. If you don't know, FFmpeg develop the libav libraries (libavcodec and libavformat) that demux, mux, decode and encode pretty much every video and audio format in existence.

If you use mplayer, you rely on these libs. If you use xine, you rely on their work. If you use VLC - same. Heck, even if you use Media Player Classic + ffdshow on Windowz you use their libs.

Thumbs up!

(No, I have nothing to do with them. I do use their libs in my project though, and they are nice).

BeOS/Haiku was rejected.

[stmr]

http://haiku-os.org/learn.php?mode=news_view&id=40 6&haikuusersession=c036c3e0b54b7e66a167d1654b692eb 2/ [haiku-os.org]

It's sad that they didn't even bother to reveal the reason why they refused.

Blender

[LetterRip]

Don't forget Blender! http://www.blender.org/ [blender.org]

There are all sorts of cool things that could be done as projects, pretty much any siggraph paper, any computer graphics research, etc. would make a good candidate.

LetterRip

Nmap too!

[fv]

If I may be excused for pimping my project too, we are seeking summer developers for the Nmap Security Scanner [insecure.org]. Last year's program was a lot of fun, and we accomplished some really cool projects [slashdot.org]. This year we have made a new list of project ideas [insecure.org], including:

• Create a new graphical frontend and powerful results viewer
• Generate graphical maps from the Nmap XML output (you can take inspiration from projects like fe3d [icapsid.net] and Cheops [marko.net]/Cheops-NG [sourceforge.net]).
• Create a web interface for scanning your networks and reporting the results.
• Become a performance Czar, whipping out your profilers and introducing your own algorithms to make Nmap run even faster while using fewer resources.
• Create a brand new interpretation of the venerable Netcat and Hping utilities.
• Add scripting/module support to Nmap so it can be used for vulnerability assessment or more intrusive application discovery.

I think those are some of the coolest projects, though the page lists others (and is always growing as I get new ideas). And don't forget, you can always propose any new idea you come up with -- don't feel limited to that list.

And while we hope you consider Nmap, remember that you can increase your odds by applying to multiple projects. I've seen some pretty cool ideas from the other organizations.

-Fyodor [insecure.org]

Students can define their own projects

[QuestionsNotAnswers]

If you are a student and keen on developing open source, then the Summer of code is a great opportunity for experience, kudos, and some cash. Either pick a project (some are pretty broad) or if you prefer come up with your own idea (compatible with the project) and submit it to one of the the approx. 70 organisations.
Or pick a project based on the mentor - many are captains of open source!
Most mentors will be happy to have anyone who has ability, and the motivation to work through to complete a project.

vs internship?

[sentientbrendan]

I'm wondering how this would compare to an internship, considering that's what college students such as myself would otherwise be doing with our time.

On the con side, the pay seems slightly low. You work from home only talk to your mentor over the internet, which seems like it might distract from the learning experience. I've telecommuted before, and while it might seem convenient at first, there are numerous related to communication, and being able to go home at the end of the day and be a psycologically non-work space that detract from those advantages. Probably the biggest problem is staying in touch with people who are in different time zones, or who merely have different working schedules. In a telecommuting situation, some people work at odd hours.

Maybe someone who worked on the summer of code previously could comment on how easy or hard it was to keep in touch with his mentor? Were there many mentors who basically ignored partipants (no need to name names)? How helpful were they in general?

Overall, as I see it the strong benefit is to be able to come up with your own project, and to be able to work on open source. Those kind of go hand in hand to give the participants a lot of freedom in what they do. For me, this would be worth the negatives mentioned above.

I guess one last factor to address, that might be merely a tie breaker for some people or a deal breaker for others, is just how good it will look on a resume. College students looking for internships are looking for work experience, but also an opportunity to break into the industry. Will future employers look at there resume's and think, "He worked for a big name company over this summer, came up with his own project and executed it." Alternatively, an employer might wonder about time spent in such an unstructured way, and wonder if participants goofed off all summer. I sincerely doubt this, but its something to consider and maybe something someone in a hiring position in industry could comment on.

Re:Many, many other projects need help

[deminisma]

Yes, this is true. The Haiku project was one that got denied, and Google refused to even give a reason. It's a shame in Haiku's case, because they've come so far (the network stack and the USB stack are really the only missing pieces, aside from those they already have a fully-functional recreation of BeOS R5, compatible with a significant number of R5 apps, including Firefox) with virtually zero corporate backing, and when a chance to finally get some money, some promotion and some developer interest comes along, they're denied it.

On the bright side though, the community has stepped up and created HaikuBounties [haikubounties.org] where users can donate money in the hope it will entice a developer to complete those last two components, and over $600 has been raised in last two or so weeks. So for the projects that missed out, I suggest they try and find out whether their community can fill the gaps SoC refuses to.

Internet Archive, too

[gojomo]

The Internet Archive [archive.org] is participating, too. We'd accept contribution projects related to the Heritrix web crawler, Wayback access tool, or NutchWAX full-text search facility. See our Summer of Code 2006 Ideas Page [archive.org].

- Gordon @ IA

Blenderheads unite!

[Anonymous Coward]

Blender got a lot of super cool features in the last Googoe SOC. It would be an absolute shame to miss this opportunity. There is so much work that is done, but so much more that can be done. The animation system got recoded last time, plus fur/hair/cloth rendering (and a hundred more items I can't remember right now). People are shocked at what you can do with a program whos binaries are still less than 10 megabytes. It rivals applications ten times as large (in file size). Blenderheads unite! Get to the Google SOC site, submit a great proposal, and impress the Siggraph crowd like never before!

Another shameless plug: FreeRADIUS

[kickdown]

FreeRADIUS is among the rejected applicants for SoC, but there are some interesting projects in there anyway. For a list, take a look here: http://www.freeradius.org/summerofcode/ [freeradius.org] One example is a TLS security layer and TCP/SCTP transport for RADIUS messages ("RadSec"), which is a leap ahead in authentication protocols.