Google Pumps $6 Million Into Summer of Code 2011 102
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."
Very generous stipend (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
5 millions for the seti (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
What's the point when maintainers ignore your work (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
We've tried several times... (Score:4, Interesting)
...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:5 millions for the seti (Score:0, Interesting)
I would like to see $5 million spent on stopping SETI@home and reclaiming all those wasted cycles around the world