Google Corporation supports so many opens source projects and other Open Source related things all over the world.

They might be one of World’s leading Open Source supporter in the world.

Today I am going to talk about GSOC. GSOC is stand for “Google Summer of Code”.

These days they launch the GSOC 2010 and it will be a contest that even you may be able to try out.

What is Google Summer of Code?

Google Summer of Code is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects.

Historically, the program has brought together over 3,400 students with over 200 open source projects, to create millions of lines of code.

This project kicked off in 2005 and is held annually.

According to Google, the goals are -

Google Summer of Code has several goals:

• Create and release open source code for the benefit of all
• Inspire young developers to begin participating in open source development
• Help open source projects identify and bring in new developers and committers
• Provide students the opportunity to do work related to their academic pursuits during the summer (think "flip bits, not burgers")
• Give students more exposure to real-world software development scenarios

Google worked with 150 mentoring organizations in 2009 and expect approximately the same number of projects to take part in 2010.

What is the Mentors Duty at this Program?

Students submit project proposals online to work with particular mentoring organizations. They are mentored by those Mentors.

What is the Mentors Duty at this Program? It will be a huge advantage! Then you may be questioning, how this will be going as a competition?

This is not a competition such as going to be like normal.

Here are the Steps that you would obey,

• Open source projects who'd like to participate in Google Summer of Code in 2010 should choose an organization administrator(s) to represent them
• Organization administrators will submit the project's application for participation online
• Google will notify the organization administrators of acceptance, and an account for the organization will be created on the Google Summer of Code 2010 site
• Students submit project proposals online to work with particular mentoring organizations
• Mentoring organizations rank student proposals and perform any other due diligence on their potential mentees; student proposals are matched with a mentor
• Google allocates a particular number of student slots to each organization
• Students are notified of acceptance
• Students begin learning more about their mentoring organization and its community before coding work starts
• Students begin coding work at the official start of the program, provided they've interacted well with their community up until the program start date
• Mentors and students provide mid-term progress evaluations
• Mentors provide a final evaluation of student progress at close of program; students submit a final review of their mentor and the program
• Student uploads completed code to Google Code hosted project

Yes. You must be 18 years of age or older by April 26, 2010 to be eligible to participate in Google Summer of Code in 2010.

You may be also a student at one kind of institute Google may notice. (For more please check out their site.)

March 12: Mentoring organization application deadline.

March 13-17: Google program administrators review organization applications.

March 18:List of accepted mentoring organizations published on the Google Summer of Code 2010 site.

March 18-29: Would-be student participants discuss application ideas with mentoring organizations.

March 29: Student application period opens.

April 9: Student application deadline.

Interim Period: Mentoring organizations review and rank student proposals; where necessary, mentoring organizations may request further proposal detail from the student applicant.

April 21: All mentors must be signed up and all student proposals matched with a mentor – Student ranking/scoring deadline. Please do not add private comments with a nonzero score or mark students as ineligible (unless doing so as part of resolving duplicate accepted students) after this deadline - IRC meeting to resolve any outstanding duplicate accepted students - timing TBD, will be announced well in advance

April 26: Accepted student proposals announced on the Google Summer of Code 2010 site.

Community Bonding Period: Students get to know mentors, read documentation, get up to speed to begin working on their projects.

May 24: Students begin coding for their GSoC projects;Google begins issuing initial student payments provided tax forms are on file and students are in good standing with their communities.

Interim Period: Mentors give students a helping hand and guidance on their projects.

July 12: Mentors and students can begin submitting mid-term evaluations.

July 16: Mid-term evaluations deadline;Google begins issuing mid-term student payments provided passing student survey is on file.

Interim Period: Mentors give students a helping hand and guidance on their projects.

August 9: Suggested 'pencils down' date. Take a week to scrub code, write tests, improve documentation, etc.

August 16: Firm 'pencils down' date. Mentors, students and organization administrators can begin submitting final evaluations to Google.

August 20: Final evaluation deadline Google begins issuing student and mentoring organization payments provided forms and evaluations are on file.

August 23: Final results of GSoC 2010 announced

August 30: Students can begin submitting required code samples to Google

October (date TBD): Mentor Summit at Google: Representatives from each successfully participating organization are invited to Google to greet, collaborate and code. Our mission for the weekend: make the program even better, have fun and make new friends.

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