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Google Open Source Software Technology

Google Pumps $6 Million Into Summer of Code 2011 102

Posted by timothy from the will-you-be-my-mentor-today dept.
darthcamaro writes "Google Summer of Code 2011 is now underway. Google is providing stipends for 1,116 students to mentor with 175 open source projects. In total, Google will be investing over $6 million dollars into Summer of Code 2011. There are a few project omissions this time around though. Neither Fedora nor Ubuntu have any students this year."
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Google Pumps $6 Million Into Summer of Code 2011 More

Google Pumps $6 Million Into Summer of Code 2011

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  • Cheap investment (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Elektroschock ( 659467 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2011 @05:40PM (#35947694)

    When you consider how helpful this is for recruitment and winning the hearts and minds of the programming elite this program is actually cheap. I would recommend governments and supranational organisations to do the same.

  • Very generous stipend (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Myji Humoz ( 1535565 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2011 @05:44PM (#35947716)
    It's really amazing how a drop in the bucket (for Google) can encourage so much innovation and foster so much enthusiasm in the next generation of programmers.

    The stipend averages out to $5376 per student, which will surely go a long way to paying for rent between semesters and then some.

    I'm fully aware that programming has lower fixed costs than say, recombinant organism research or semiconductor development, but I can't help but wonder how many STEM students we could encourage by redirecting just 1% of the U.S. national defense budget. The gains of such projects really isn't in the end result (though they're nice), but rather in the skills, connections, and confidence that the work inspires.

    • While it may get your name on the big stage, isn't a ton of money. Normal internships I worked for my engineering degree started mid May, ended mid August. So lets say May 16 - August 19, which is 95 days [timeanddate.com]. You'll probably only work 5/7ths of those days or ~67 days, 8 hours a day for 536 hours.

      Or around $10 an hour. Now, most certainly if you're good you can deliver it in much less time. But at the same time. $10/hour is what I made after my freshmen year in 2002. I think I was making around $19-20/hr by 200

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by theskipper ( 461997 )

      Common sense ideas like yours won't be possible until moderate Republicans take back the party.

      Until then, science will remain a big juicy target for budget cuts.

      This country is whistling past the graveyard when it comes to science and future economic prosperity.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by whovian ( 107062 )

        Common sense ideas like yours won't be possible until moderate Republicans take back the party.

        Sarcasm, or no? It was Republicans who advocated, passed, and then underfunded No Child Left Behind. The Democratic party is seeing fit to run with it though.

        As I see it, every few years there are renewed pushes to get kids interested in the sciences to little apparent effect. US culture idolizes sports and entertainment while mocking geeks and scientists. Those who are qualified to work in science and reject the big incomes of finance cannot find corresponding work because foreigners are sought after to

        • Good points and, no, sarcasm wasn't intended. Just that it takes two to tango.

          There are moderates and extremists on both sides of the aisle. But when level-headed moderates are in the majority on both sides, things actually tend to get done in a rational fashion.

          When one side is out of whack, like the Republicans these days, it's essentially hopeless. Then it's all about demagoguery, not progress.

          • Republicrats and Demicans are not the solution to any problem. But neither are the people at the extremes. And for every (R) you don't like, I'm sure there is a (D) on the other side that is just as horrible that you ignore, because ... well you might like what they do MOST of the time (or visa versa if you're an (R).

            And the (R) are out of whack because the (D) showed themselves out of Whack previously, passing the boondongle of HealthCare reform that does nothing to reform HealthCare other than to create y

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "...but I can't help but wonder how many STEM students we could encourage by redirecting just 1% of the U.S. national defense budget"

      1% of ~685 billion? Uh, yeah, $6.8 billion aught to be enough to fund a lot of STEM students, given that 1% of the defense budget is more than the entire budget of the NSF in 2010 (~$5.5 billion).

    • What's in it for Google:

      1. More open source software means more ability for young innovators to create cool new stuff on the Internet.

      2. More cool new stuff on the Internet means people spend more time online.

      3. The more time people spend online, the more likely they are to see an ad or click on it.

      4. Profit!

      Also, a side benefit is that M$ profit gets reduced because they have to fight side battles with a 101 open-source projects. This is asymmetrical warfare in that a small investment in open source can me

      • What's in it for Google:

        1. More open source software means more ability for young innovators to create cool new stuff on the Internet.

        2. More cool new stuff on the Internet means people spend more time online.

        3. The more time people spend online, the more likely they are to see an ad or click on it.

        4. Profit!

        Also, a side benefit is that M$ profit gets reduced because they have to fight side battles with a 101 open-source projects. This is asymmetrical warfare in that a small investment in open source can mean a huge loss to Microsoft.

        For most people, it is the content on the internet that is the cool stuff, whether it's accessed via open or closed source software is irrelevant.

        • No, what I'm talking about is that almost all of the cool web 2.0 (or 1.0) stuff is built with open source software.

          If you're a bunch of college guys trying to come up with the Next Big Thing, it's very easy for you to cobble it together using LAMP for the platform, Postfix+Dovecot for email. To the extent that GIMP and Inkscape work well, you've got your graphics that you need to create for your website right there.

          To the extent that such open source software is available, and it works well (the point of S

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by trawg ( 308495 )

      The stipend averages out to $5376 per student, which will surely go a long way to paying for rent between semesters and then some.

      Not to mention the incalculable benefit of all that new open source code they're contributing to.

      The Summer of Code is probably my favourite thing about Google. Such a great example of corporate marketing!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lee1026 ( 876806 )

      When I was in college a few years back, almost every prof was working on research products for the military. This means that the military is effectively paying stipends to a small army of grad students. When you add in things like the research that Lockheed and the such are doing (and funding), the military is in fact doing exactly what you are suggesting what it does. Most of the cost of all of those high end weapons is R&D, and when you get down to it, R&D dollars is paying some grad student somew

    • The stipend averages out to $5376 per student,

      It's $5500 per student: 5000 for the student plus 500 for the mentor. TFA does not consider that some students may drop out, so they don't actually know yet how much the average student will get.

  • Both Fedora and Ubuntu will reap benefits, because they will end up packaging many of the results. But even more importantly, people around the world will reap the benefits. Not only immediately (from these projects), but even more importantly, but also from all the amazing work these developers will do in the years ahead because they they learned how to collaboratively develop software. Good job.

    • FTT: "Neither Fedora nor Ubuntu have any students this year."

      Seems like Google thinks Unity sucks as well. :P

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by EvanED ( 569694 )

        Besides, it's not quite right. While Ubuntu doesn't have any, Fedora has 6 projects.

      • Debian has 9 projects. As a Debian derivative, Ubuntu will benefit.

        At least one of them is being mentored by Canonical / Ubuntu (Matt Zimmerman, the Ubuntu CTO).

  • Yea, yea, yea. But what about those other people that aren't doing anything to help this project? Like the government...or my grandma? They need to get their shit together. Seriously.

  • Conspicuously missing ... Android. Sure, a couple of apps but nothing on a system level.

  • Supporting the Summer of Code is my favorite aspect of the Google Corporation. They help young guys learn real programming and also improve lots of open source projects. It would be great if other big companies also did this, but after so many years, I doubt it will happen.

  • For example this one is lame [google-melange.com]

    ldd + equery belongs and some bash glue would do that.

    • And in case anybody doubts the lameness of this specific project, behold

      find . -type f -executable -exec ldd {} \; | grep -vF "not a dynamic executable" | cut -f 1 -d " " | xargs equery belongs

      can i haz stipend?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      how do you intend to run LDD on something before it's compiled, when you can't compile it without the deps?

  • 5 millions for the seti (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bubulubugoth ( 896803 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2011 @06:25PM (#35948030) Homepage

    Wouldn't be nice if Google pumped 5 millions to keep the seti@home working for 2 years more? They pump 6 millions for a small and local event...

    • No, it wouldn't be nice. It would be $5 million wasted on SETI@Home.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Ruke ( 857276 )
      I don't mean to sound harsh, but has SETI produced any results that might justify further funding it? I understand the "it's cool!" factor, and I understand that we don't really expect to find alien civilizations every day, and I understand how important of a discovery it would be if we did discover intelligent extraterrestrial life... however, I also think that, given $5 million, we'll see far greater returns on investing that money in Summer of Code than we would supporting SETI. The expected results from
    • Two of the GSOC projects this year were for the SETI Institute [seti.org]. Apparently, the SETI Institute proposed 5 projects, but only 2 of them were funded.

      • Two of the GSOC projects this year were for the SETI Institute [seti.org]. Apparently, the SETI Institute proposed 5 projects, but only 2 of them were funded.

        I would guess that at least one off them was a project "to develop an algorithm capable of producing a fictitious but convincing pattern out of vast amounts of random data in order to justify further funding for the SETI project".

  • What's the point when maintainers ignore your work (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gumpish ( 682245 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2011 @06:27PM (#35948050) Journal

    Code written to allow per-workspace wallpaper in GNOME as part of a Summer of Code 2008 project:

    http://gsocblog.jsharpe.net/ [jsharpe.net]

    Result?

    Ignored by GNOME.

    https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=543596 [gnome.org]

    Thanks, GNOME.
    Thanks, Søren Sandmann.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by spikeb ( 966663 )
      GNOME ignores anything that doesn't come from the select few entrenched bastards within the project. Doesn't make it the rule for all projects, though.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by macshit ( 157376 )
        If it depended on mono I'll bet they would have added it...
        :[

      • It's in their right, but then why bother with GSoC at all, if you're not going to use the results of it? When people come and see tasks posted by various projects, they kinda assume that those tasks are actually meaningful, and not just a waste of time.

    • Code written to allow per-workspace wallpaper in GNOME as part of a Summer of Code 2008 project:

      http://gsocblog.jsharpe.net/ [jsharpe.net]

      Result?

      Ignored by GNOME.

      https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=543596 [gnome.org]

      Thanks, GNOME.
      Thanks, SÃren Sandmann.

      Never mind GNOME, why would Google be paying for that??

      • Google doesn't pick the projects. Google picks the organisations, and they pick the projects. Over the last few years, there has been an increasing trend towards picking large umbrella groups (e.g. KDE, GNU), so Google is two layers of management away from the actual decision.

    • Piss on GNOME, apparently there is a working patch for per-workspace wallpaper in Compiz now. So now you can use it with any compiz-compatible WM if you have a halfway decent GPU...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

        Which rules out both my laptops for having Intel and VIA GPU's.

        • I share your pain because all three of my laptops suck, but that doesn't mean you and I didn't make unintelligent purchasing decisions.

  • Fedora's got 6 projects (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nushio ( 951488 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2011 @06:28PM (#35948054) Homepage

    Look for them under "The Fedora Project".
    Sudo support for SSSD.
    Robotics Suite
    Fedora Medical Packages
    Revert to Snapshot for Ext4
    KDE Plasma Dependency and
    Fedora Events System

    Disclaimer: I'm the mentor for the Fedora Events System :P

  • why don't users get some of the google cash (Score:5, Funny)

    by cinnamon colbert ( 732724 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2011 @06:31PM (#35948070) Journal
    if you look at google, facebook, linkedin, etc, it is we - the users - who make them rich.
    I think 50%, gross, of the IPO should be given to charity, with charitys chosen by the users.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Why don't you start your massive search engine / advertising website and do that then?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Thing 1 ( 178996 )

      if you look at google, facebook, linkedin, etc, it is we - the users - who make them rich. I think 50%, gross, of the IPO should be given to charity, with charitys chosen by the users.

      Yeah, and I vote all your money into my wallet. Neither are likely.

      • if you look at google, facebook, linkedin, etc, it is we - the users - who make them rich. I think 50%, gross, of the IPO should be given to charity, with charitys chosen by the users.

        Yeah, and I vote all your money into my wallet. Neither are likely.

        Finding a selfless, moral, sane, witty and wise poster on slashdot isn't likely either, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be nice.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

      You mean they get rich because we use their products?
      My god! It's unheard of in the world of business!

      • You mean they get rich because we use their products? My god! It's unheard of in the world of business!

        Yeah, it's good that you're seeing the bigger picture, moron. What is it with all the "greed is good" weenies now taking over slashdot, the internet and the world?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

          This has nothing to do with "good" or "evil".
          It has to do with the basic fact that businesses exist in order to make money.
          If it's not supposed to make money, it's called a "non-profit".
          There simply isn't any bigger picture than that besides the one you've made up in your own head.

  • We've tried several times... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pongo000 ( 97357 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2011 @06:32PM (#35948084)

    ...to get onboard, but have been rejected each time. The amount of detail that Google requires for its application is just mind-boggling. More mind-boggling is the selection process that seems to favor established projects with large developer bases that really aren't in need of extra help. Good luck getting on the SoC bandwagon if you're a small (but established) open software project.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Many small but established open source projects enrolled in SoC this year just fine. They didn't get many slots, but they got their feet in the door. When I filled out my org's application, it took like 30 minutes. It wasn't hard at all..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rryan ( 1943214 )
      Proof by contradiction. Mixxx (http://mixxx.org) has probably 2-5 active developers and we've received 3 or 4 students every year since the beginning of the SOC. I've been to the GSoC mentor summit as well and there are plenty of small sized projects. In fact, this year they focused on accepting more smaller projects via the 'referral' system whereby projects could refer other small projects that would be a good fit for the SOC.

    • Considering that Sourceforge.net alone hosts "over 260 000 projects" one cannot be faulted for deducing that perhaps they do receive a large number of applications. I would wager they try select projects which will most "benefit mankind". All subjective off course but show me a process that is perfect. Good luck next year.

  • I was surprised to read that Fedora didn't have any students this year (after all, my proposal for Fedora was accepted but I chose Tor in the de-duplication process). As it turns out, Fedora actually has six projects this year. The full list of accepted projects is available here [google-melange.com].

  • see subject.

  • Fedora (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Did you even look? They are under "The Fedora Project" organization and we have 6 students this year from GSoC and several more as our own interns.

  • Pumps 6M$?! Google may perhaps accidentally spill 6 M$.

  • I wish they'd let people vote on how the money should be allocated / which projects deserve funding. It'd be interesting to see what came out on top.

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