Google Summer of Code 2012 Announced

The eighth annual Google Summer of Code was announced at FOSDEM on February 4, 2012. More than 6,000 students from more than 90 countries have completed the GSoC program over the years.

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is an international program that pairs students with mentors and mentoring organizations. Students receive a stipend to write code and contribute to open source projects during their participation in the program.

In 2011, 175 organizations participated in the Summer of Code. On February 27, 2012, mentoring organizations can start submitting applications for this year's event. The deadline for applications is March 9, and accepted organizations will be announced on March 19. Students can then apply to participate from March 16 until April 6, 2012. On April 23, accepted student proposals will be announced on the Google Summer of Code 2012 site. See the complete timeline for more details.

OpenMRS, web-based medical record system originally designed for use in the developing world, has participated in GSoC for five years. In 2011, 15 students worked with OpenMRS mentors on a variety of tasks. Jelena Skorucak, for example, "reworked the attributes a person has within OpenMRS, giving clinics the flexibility to record more information about the persons."

The KDE project has participated for seven years, and in 2011 the project worked with 51 students. “KDE got forty-seven completed projects, which is tremendous," says Valorie Zimmerman, KDE Administrator for Google Summer of Code. "Our focus though is not on the code itself, but on the students and their involvement with KDE."

To learn more about the 2012 Google Summer of Code, check out the official GSoC website or keep an eye on the Google open source blog for updates.

• Programming
• Google
• open source
• summer of code