Google Summer of Code
Encyclopedia
The Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is an annual program, first held from May to August 2005, in which GoogleGoogle
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
awards stipend
Stipend
A stipend is a form of salary, such as for an internship or apprenticeship. It is often distinct from a wage or a salary because it does not necessarily represent payment for work performed, instead it represents a payment that enables somebody to be exempt partly or wholly from waged or salaried...
s (of 5000 USD) to hundreds of students who successfully complete a requested free or open-source software
Foss
Foss may refer toPeople*Foss , people with the last name Foss*Foss Shanahan , New Zealand diplomat*Foss Westcott , English bishop...
coding project during the summer. The program is open to students aged 18 or over – the closely related Google Highly Open Participation Contest
Google Highly Open Participation Contest
The Google Highly Open Participation Contest was a contest run by Google during 2007-2008 aimed at high school students. The contest is designed to encourage high school students to participate in open source projects...
is intended for students under the age of 18.
The event draws its name from the 1967 Summer of Love
Summer of Love
The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, creating a cultural and political rebellion...
(of the Sixties
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
counterculture
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
), and the idea for the SoC came directly from Google's founders, Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin
Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin is a Russian-born American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google, one of the largest internet companies. , his personal wealth is estimated to be $16.7 billion....
and Larry Page
Larry Page
Lawrence "Larry" Page is an American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Sergey Brin, is best known as the co-founder of Google. As of April 4, 2011, he is also the chief executive of Google, as announced on January 20, 2011...
. From 2007 until 2009 Leslie Hawthorn, who has been involved in the project since 2006, was the program manager. In 2010, Carol Smith took over management of the program.
Overview
The program invites students who meet their eligibility criteria to post applications that detail the software-coding project they wish to perform. These applications are then evaluated by the corresponding mentoring organization. Every participating organizationOrganization
An organization is a social group which distributes tasks for a collective goal. The word itself is derived from the Greek word organon, itself derived from the better-known word ergon - as we know `organ` - and it means a compartment for a particular job.There are a variety of legal types of...
must provide mentors for each of the project ideas received, if the organization is of the opinion that the project would benefit from them. The mentor
Mentor
In Greek mythology, Mentor was the son of Alcimus or Anchialus. In his old age Mentor was a friend of Odysseus who placed Mentor and Odysseus' foster-brother Eumaeus in charge of his son Telemachus, and of Odysseus' palace, when Odysseus left for the Trojan War.When Athena visited Telemachus she...
s then rank the applications and decide among themselves which proposals to accept. Google then decides how many projects each organization gets, and asks the organizations to mark at most that many projects accordingly.
In the event of a single student being marked in more than one organization, Google mediates between all the involved organizations and decides who "gets" that student. The other mentoring organization then unmarks the student and marks a new proposal for acceptance, or gives their slot back to the pool, after which it is redistributed.
2005
In 2005, more than 8,740 project proposals were submitted for the 200 available student positions. Due to the overwhelming response, Google expanded the program to 419 positions.The mentoring organizations were responsible for reviewing and selecting proposals, and then providing guidance to those students to help them complete their proposal. Students that successfully completed their proposal to the satisfaction of their mentoring organization were awarded $4500 and a Google Summer of Code T-shirt, while $500 per project was sent to the mentoring organization. Approximately 80% of the projects were successfully completed in 2005, although completion rates varied by organization: Ubuntu
Ubuntu (operating system)
Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
, for example, reported a completion rate of only 64%, and KDE
KDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
reported a 67% completion rate. Many projects were continued past summer, even though the SOC period was over, and some changed direction as they developed.
For the first Summer of Code, Google was criticized for not giving sufficient time to open source organizations so they could plan projects for the Summer of Code. Despite these criticisms there were 41 organizations involved, including FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
, Apache
Apache Software Foundation
The Apache Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation to support Apache software projects, including the Apache HTTP Server. The ASF was formed from the Apache Group and incorporated in Delaware, U.S., in June 1999.The Apache Software Foundation is a decentralized community of developers...
, KDE
KDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
, Ubuntu
Ubuntu (operating system)
Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
, Blender
Blender (software)
Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software product used for creating animated films, visual effects, interactive 3D applications or video games. The current release version is 2.60, and was released on October 19, 2011...
, Mozdev, and Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
itself.
According to a blog post by Chris DiBona
Chris DiBona
Chris DiBona is the open source and public sector engineering manager at Google. His team oversees license compliance and supports the open source developer community through programs such as the Google Summer of Code and through the release of open source software projects and patches on Google...
, Google's open source program manager, "something like 30 percent of the students stuck with their groups past SoC [Summer of Code]." Mozilla developer Gervase Markham
Gervase Markham (programmer)
Gervase Markham is a British programmer for the Mozilla Foundation, and a lead developer of Bugzilla. He started contributing to the Mozilla project in 1999, and became the youngest paid employee of Mozilla.org at age 23 after he graduated from Oxford University.Markham is named after his paternal...
also commented that none of the 10 Google-sponsored Mozilla projects survived after the event. However, the Gaim (now Pidgin)
Pidgin (software)
Pidgin is an open-source multi-platform instant messaging client, based on a library named libpurple. Libpurple has support for many commonly used instant messaging protocols, allowing the user to log into various services from one application.The number of Pidgin users was estimated to be over 3...
project was able to enlist enough coding support through the event to include the changes into Gaim (now Pidgin)
Pidgin (software)
Pidgin is an open-source multi-platform instant messaging client, based on a library named libpurple. Libpurple has support for many commonly used instant messaging protocols, allowing the user to log into various services from one application.The number of Pidgin users was estimated to be over 3...
2.0; the Jabber Software Foundation (now XMPP Standards Foundation)
XMPP Standards Foundation
XMPP Standards Foundation is the foundation in charge of the standardization of the protocol extensions of XMPP, the open standard of instant messaging and presence of the IETF.- History :...
and KDE
KDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
project also counted a few surviving projects of their own from the event (KDE only counted 1 continuing project from out of the 24 projects which it sponsored).
2006
In 2006, around 6000 applications were submitted, less than the previous year because all applicants were required to have Google Accounts, thereby reducing the number of spam applications received. Google and most mentors are also of the opinion that the proposals were of much higher quality than 2005's applications. Also, the number of participating organizations more than doubled to 102. In addition to the organizations that participated in 2005, organizations such as DebianDebian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
, GNU
GNU
GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...
, Gentoo
Gentoo Linux
Gentoo Linux is a computer operating system built on top of the Linux kernel and based on the Portage package management system. It is distributed as free and open source software. Unlike a conventional software distribution, the user compiles the source code locally according to their chosen...
, Adium
Adium
Adium is a free and open source instant messaging client for Mac OS X that supports multiple IM networks, including Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, AIM, ICQ, and XMPP. It supports many protocols through the libraries libezv , MGTwitterEngine , and libpurple...
and PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
participated in 2006. Google had decided to sponsor around 600 projects.
The student application deadline was extended until 2006-05-09, at 11:00 PDT. Although the results were to be declared by 5:00 PM PDT, there was considerable delay in publishing it as Google had not expected several students to be selected in more than one organization. Google allows one student to undertake only one project as part of the program. It took Google several hours to resolve the duplicate acceptances. The acceptance letters were sent out on May 24, at 3:13 AM PDT, but the letters were also sent out to some 1,600 applicants who had in fact, not been accepted by Google's SoC committee. At 3:38 AM PDT, Chris DiBona posted an apology to the official mailing list, adding that "We're very deeply sorry for this. If you received two e-mails, one that said you were accepted and one that you were not, this means you were not."
Google has released a final list of projects accepted into the program on the SoC website. The proposals themselves were visible to the public for a few hours, after which they were taken down in response to complaints by the participants about the "sensitive and private" information that their applications contained. However, Google has since resolved these issues by allowing each student involved in Summer of Code to provide a brief abstract message that is publicly viewable and completely separate from the content of the actual proposal that was submitted to Google.
The Summer of Code 2006 ended on 2006-09-08. According to Google, 82% of the students received a positive evaluation at the end of the program.
2007
In 2007, Google accepted 131 organizations and over 900 students. Those 131 organizations had a total of nearly 1500 mentors.Students were allowed to submit up to 20 applications although only one could be accepted. Google received nearly 6,200 applications.
To allow more students to apply, Google extended the application deadline from March 24 to March 26 at the last minute. It was then extended again to March 27.
On April 11, the acceptance letters were delayed due to additional efforts involved in resolving duplicate submissions. At one point, the web interface changed each application to have a status of Not Selected. Google officials reported that only the acceptance email was the definitive indication of acceptance.
2008
In 2008, Google chose 174 open source organizations to participate in Summer of Code, greatly increased from 131 the year before and 102 in 2006. Each organization was chosen based on a number of criteria, such as the virtue of the projects, the ideas given for students to work on, and the ability of the mentors to ensure students successfully completed projects.Nearly 7100 proposals were received for the 2008 Summer of Code, of which 1125 were selected.
The university results were announced on May 8, 2008 at Google's "Open Source at Google" blog. According to it, University of Moratuwa
University of Moratuwa
The University of Moratuwa, located on the banks of the Bolgoda Lake in Katubedda, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, is a technological university in Sri Lanka. Apart from the academics including the undergraduate and postgraduate studies, university of Moratuwa presents a variety of social and cultural...
came first in both "Top 10 Universities of 2008 GSoC applicants" and "Top 10 accepted universities 2008 GSoC" categories. Wrocław University of Technology able to secure the second place in "2008 GSoC Accepted: Top 10 Universities" category, while Universidade Estadual de Campinas
Universidade Estadual de Campinas
Universidade Estadual de Campinas is one of the three public universities of the Brazilian state of São Paulo, along both USP and UNESP....
became second in "2008 GSoC Applicants: Top 10 Universities" category.
2009
For 2009 Google reduced the number of software projects to 150, and capped the number of student projects it would accept at 1,000, 85 percent of which were successfully completed.As of 2009, University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka ranks first in terms of the number of awards received by students for the five year period 2005-2009 securing 79 accepted students.
2010
In 2010 Google accepted 150 software projects and 1,026 students from 69 countries worldwide. The top ten countries by number of students accepted in 2010 are: United States (197), India (125), Germany (57), Brazil (50), Poland (46), Canada (40), China (39), United Kingdom (36), France (35), Sri Lanka(34).2011
The number of organizations has been increased to 175, of which 50 are new.1,115 Students have been accepted.
A total of 595 different universities has participated in the program, 160 of which were new to the program. The 13 universities with the highest number of students accepted into this year’s Google Summer of Code account for 14.5% of the students.
University of Moratuwa
University of Moratuwa
The University of Moratuwa, located on the banks of the Bolgoda Lake in Katubedda, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, is a technological university in Sri Lanka. Apart from the academics including the undergraduate and postgraduate studies, university of Moratuwa presents a variety of social and cultural...
, Sri Lanka has secured first position in this year's program with 27 accepted students. Polytechnic University Of Bucharest, Romania was the second with 23 accepted students while Indian Institute Of Technology, Kharagpur, India placed third with 14 students.
The breakdown of college degrees for the 2011 Google Summer of Code program was as follows: 55% of the students were undergraduates, 23.3% were pursuing their Masters degrees, 10.2% were working on their PhD’s and 11.5% did not specify which degree they were working toward.
External links
- Official website
- InternetNews article on SoC success rate
- InternetNews article on the results of SoC 2006
- [irc://irc.freenode.net/gsoc #gsoc] on freenode