A chip off the ol’ Google Summer of Code block

We here in the Google Open Source Programs Office are always excited to hear about programs that are similar (or even inspired by) our flagship student program, Google Summer of Code (GSoC). Contributing to open source software in any capacity makes us happy, and learning about students exchanged in open source development makes us just plain giddy. We’d like to use today’s post to highlight some of the great open source student programs from past and present.

• Outreach Program For Women - a program that encourages women to get involved in open source software
• Open Summer of Code - an open source program for students in Belgium
• Rails Girls Summer of Code - three-month full time scholarships to pairs of Rails Girls students, supported by coaches
• Ruby Summer of Code - a student internship program designed to help fund student development of Ruby coding projects
• European Space Agency Summer of Code - offers student developers stipends to write code for various space-related open source software projects
• Oman Summer of Code - a open source coding program based in Oman
• Summer of Learning at CMU - students learn how to program robots using free software

And don’t forget that Melange, the software used to run GSoC (as well as our contest for younger students, Google Code-in), is also open sourced. You are welcome to use it to start your own program. The source code can be found here.

Please use the comments section on the blog to tell us about your favorite Google Summer of Code-esqe program. We’d love to hear more!

By Mary Radomile, Open Source Programs