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<img src="http://parcom.pro-networks.org/PROneT-News/google.gif" align="right" alt="Growing pains for Google's Summer of Code">Growing pains for Google's Summer of Code
By Bruce Byfield
Saturday September 16, 2006

As the second Google Summer of Code (SOC) winds down, most participants agree: the program, which pays selected students to work on a free or open source software (FOSS) project for three months, is a unique and exciting opportunity, but needs to continue efforts to become more organized. Those who were previously involved tend to agree that this year was less chaotic than last year.

However, whether they are organizers at Google or students or members of mentoring organizations (the projects accepting students), most participants this year also see the need for more structure. Many of them also offer concrete advice about how participants can get more out of the program if it happens next year. Part of the reason for the growing pains is the sheer size of the program. According to Leslie Hawthorn, the program coordinator, SOC accepted 630 applications this year, an increase of over 50% from 2005.

The number of mentoring organization increased even more, rising to 107 compared with 40 in the first year. Although the total number of applicants was about half as large as in 2005, Hawthorn says, this is because the expectations were more clearly expressed. "We think we ended up getting fewer applications that were vaguely or poorly formed," she says. Even so, the Google organizers had to process over 6300 applications.

Despite these scaling problems, Hawthorn and open source program manager Chris DiBona point to significant improvements in how Google organized the program this year. This year, the program was administered by a web application, rather than email.

<img src="http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/images/smiles/source.jpg"> Linux.com
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