Google's 'Summer Of Code' programme will return again this year. However, this time around, the search engine giant is planning to take advantage of lessons learned previously, in an attempt to improve the scheme for everyone involved. The programme, started three years ago by Google, pays students to provide code for FOSS (free and open source software) projects. Since the beginning of the programme in 2005, more than 1000 students have taken part in over 100 projects, with an estimated ten times that number applying to participate in the scheme. In the previous 2 years, approximately 80 per cent of participants completed their projects - earning themselves $4500, while their project mentors collected $500.
Leslie Hawthorn, open source programme co-ordinator at Google, claims the biggest change for this year's scheme is the increased preparation time. Previously, applications for the scheme began in April, with the programme itself kicking-off towards the end of May. For 2007, however, the scheme has been announced early, with mentor organisations being invited to apply between March 5-12 and students from March 14-23. Successful applicants will be announced on April 9 with the programme scheduled to officially begin on May 28 2007.
The longer preparation time will allow the four-person administration team for the programme to promote 'Summer of Code' at a higher level than in previous years, with posters being distributed on university campuses by past students and supporters. With the additional publicity, coupled with the scheme's growing reputation, it is envisaged that the 2007 scheme will see an increase in the number of applicants and, as a result, will require more processing time.
In addition, the extended timetable will help both students and mentor organisations to become better organised, as in previous years there was some difficulty in bringing students up to speed with the projects while they were already actively coding for them. The increased gap between the acceptance onto the scheme and starting work will allow students to become more familiar with project documentation and code repositories.
For mentors, the extra time will allow Google to advise on dealing with common problems such as disappearing students or changes to mentor staff. Google are looking to receive action plans from prospective mentor organisations detailing their plans and responses should situations like these arise, although they stress that in the end, mentor organisations will make their own decisions on how best to tackle problems.
Hawthorn also suggests that the extended preparation will help to increase the success rate of this year's programme, as well as give rejected applications a second chance: if accepted students disappear before the start of the programme, then those who were initially rejected may yet get an opportunity to join the programme - although at the discretion of the mentor organisation.
The creation of knowledge base wikis is another change for the 2007 scheme and will be available to both mentors and students as places where previous participants can pass on their advice, so that new applicants can be more successful in the scheme. Google has already invited past mentors and students to contribute advice to this year's participants.
One area in which Google is trying to improve upon is the slowness in paying students. While Google is actively looking at solutions, part of the problem appears to be the sheer scope of the programme itself. In 2006, the programme had 634 students spread across 90 countries, and made payments to participants in 73 different currencies.
The catalyst for the changes Google has made to this year's scheme comes from feedback gathered across the preceding two years. At the end of the scheme in 2006, Google hosted a mentor summit whose participants included council from Drupal, Joomla!, Ubuntu and Apache, among others. Commenting on the summit, Hawthorn stated:
"I really appreciate the great feedback we've gotten from the community and from mentors and students. If it hadn't been for their great comments, we wouldn't have made the changes we made this year."
