Ibrahim Abdel Fattah Mohamed Personal bLOG

GSoC 2009 is on!

Today Google Student Blog stated that a new year of google Summer of Code has just started, I think depiak, will join this year. We have been doing great and I think we are ready. Even if they wasn’t interested and I doubt this, I will join this year, it’s really a great experience as a lot of my firends have stated.

What is Google Summer of Code?

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects. Google will be working with several open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund several projects over a three month period. Historically, the program has brought together nearly 2,500 students with over 180 open source projects to create millions of lines of code. The program, which kicked off in 2005, is now in its fifth year. If you are feeling nostalgic or are interested in learning more about the projects we have worked with in the past, check out the 2006, 2007 and 2008 program pages.

While the majority of past student participants were enrolled in university Computer Science and Computer Engineering programs, GSoCers come from a wide variety of educational backgrounds, from computational biology to mining engineering. Many of our past participants had never participated in an open source project before GSoC; others used the GSoC stipend as an opportunity to concentrate fully on their existing open source coding activities over the summer. Many of our “graduates” have later become program mentors.

You might be interested in seeing this video introducing Google Summer of Code 2009.

Here is the post from Google Student Blog and Google Open-Source Blog.

Interested in learning more about open source software development and methodologies? Looking for a way to get that experience while getting paid? Look no further!

Through the Google Summer of Code^TM program, we match college and university students with mentors from academia and industry to work on a three month coding project. You’re welcome to propose a project that suits your specialized interests or to apply to work on a project proposed by one of our mentoring organizations. Successful student participants receive a $4500 stipend, an awesome t-shirt and valuable exposure to real world software development scenarios. You won’t even need to leave home to work with a global community of members from more than 98 countries. Best of all, no previous experience with open source development is required, and there will be projects available across a wide variety of technical areas and skill levels.

We’re currently accepting applications from open source projects who wish to act as mentoring organizations. We’ll publish the list of accepted open source projects, along with their suggested project ideas, on Wednesday, March 18th. You’ll have a few days to get to know your would-be mentors before student applications open on Monday, March 23rd. However, there’s no reason to wait to get involved with the Google Summer of Codecommunity; check out the webpages from past instances of the program, review what other students have done and decide what open source projects look interesting to you. While there are no guarantees, if an organization has participated in the past, chances are they’ll return again this year provided they choose to apply.

Looking for more background? We have a wide variety of resources to help you get started. First, read our program Frequently Asked Questions for an overview of Google Summer of Code. We also have a community wiki that has some great advice for student applicants and more information to give you an idea of the mentor’s perspective. You can also check out a variety of videos, including information about the program and screencasts made by past students, in our program YouTube channel. If you still have questions or want to jump in after taking a look at the documentation, you can always find us in the Google Summer of CodeDiscussion group or in #gsoc on Freenode. Best of luck to all of our applicants, and here’s to our fifth Google Summer of Code!