Summer Is Almost Here, and So Is the Summer of Code
by Reuven Lerner - Apr. 03, 2008Comments (2)- Related Blog Posts
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Google is well known for their many April Fool's Day jokes. I still remember when Gmail was launched; the notion of 1GB of free e-mail storage space was considered so ridiculous that it had to be a joke. Except, of course, that Gmail was serious.
This year, April 1st was supposed to mark another serious day at Google, namely the deadline for student applications to the Summer of Code. But this turned out to be another joke of sorts; Google has extended the deadline to April 7th, giving students several more days to apply.
What is the Summer of Code? And just what are students applying to do?
The Summer of Code is a program in which students work on open source projects during the summer. The students are not Google employees, and are not working on Google projects. However, they are paid $4,500 from Google.
In exchange, they agree to work on an open source project, under the guidance of a mentor, over the course of a summer. Google claims that last year's Summer of Code funded 900 different projects, from students in more than 90 countries.
Just about any open source project can join the Summer of Code, and a very large number of students have done so. Projects signed up earlier this year, indicating their willingness not only to have a paid intern, but also to commit to having someone on project team available to mentor the student. Students applying to the program indicate on which project they would like to join, and negotiate a specific focus with the project and mentor.
The computer industry has a growing love-hate relationship with Google: On the one hand, Google has generated a great many negative comments over the last few years, having to do with their secrecy, their attitude toward click fraud, their relations with China, their growing database of personal information, and their increasing share of the online advertising industry. At the same time, it's rare to find a hard-core Internet user who doesn't search with Google, or use some of Google's online (and free) applications.
Moreover, Google has hired many of the best-known people in the technology world, giving them not only salaries and stock options, but also a great deal of freedom to pursue new ideas. For the time being, Google is making enough money to allow its employees such freedom; I assume that they're betting on at least one profitable idea coming out of their labs every few months, such that they can continue to dominate and profit.
So while Google's sponsorship of the Summer of Code is obviously a good thing for the open source arena, it's also good for Google. The $4 million they pay the students, even if it's only half of the actual costs that they incur, helps to harbor goodwill in the open source world, and the computer world in general, offsetting some of the negative press they have received in recent years. It also brings some of the best and brightest students to Google's attention, such that they can be offered jobs when they graduate.
But even if we see Google's motivation in the Summer of Code as purely selfish, there's no doubt that the open source world benefits a great deal from this initiative. I look forward to seeing various programs I use -- including Adium, PostgreSQL, and Ruby -- benefitting from all this in the near future.
Do you think other technology companies could benefit from soliciting these kinds of open source efforts?Â
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