Now is the Summer of Our Discontent

Google's Summer of Code has been running for a few years now, and is an established and important fixture for the free software world:

Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together over 4500 successful student participants and over 3000 mentors from over 100 countries worldwide, all for the love of code.

An obvious question is: where are all those participants coming from? Now we know; here are the top ten countries by student count:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Time for Amazon to Pay its dues to Open Source?

It's nearly summertime. How do I know? Not, of course, by looking at the iffy British weather outside, but because Google's Summer of Code is here again:

On The H Open.

All's Well That Googles Well

I was worrying that Google's Summer of Code might be fizzling out. Happily, it seems that things are fine:

Google Summer of Code 2008 is on! Over the past three years, the program has brought together over 1500 students and 2000 mentors from 90 countries worldwide, all for the love of code. This year, we're welcoming 1125 student contributors and 175 Free and Open Source projects into the program.

Sounds pretty healthy.

Is Google Summer of Code Fizzling Out?

I've always assumed that Google's Summer of Code, a generous if self-interested offer to pay for students to do some directed open source coding during school/university holidays, was wildly popular - after all, who *wouldn't* want to get paid for hacking? But maybe there are the first signs of momentum being lost in this post, which suggests that the recent deadline extension hasn't led to a flood of applications:

Extending the deadline has, for us, only resulted in six or seven more applications, and the number of applications is about 50% of what it was last year. I'm not sure why that is - persuading people to apply is not really within my power, at least. In the next few days, I guess I'll find out whether we have quality rather than quantity :-)

Anyone else with positive/negative experiences?

The Google Highly Open Participation Contest?!?

Despite having the world's worst name, the Google Highly Open Participation Contest sounds a fine initiative:

Following on from the success of the Google Summer of Code program, Google is pleased to announce this new effort to get young people involved in open source development. We've teamed up with the open source projects listed here to give student contestants the opportunity to learn more about and contribute to all aspects of open source software development, from writing code and documentation to preparing training materials and conducting user experience research.

The Google Summer of Code programme seems to be flourishing, so extending it to younger hackers is a natural step. Moreover, the earlier people are exposed to the joys of free software, the more like they are to be converted.
(Via Dries Buytaert.)

Now is Our Summer of Code Made Glorious Winter

After the Summer of Code, now the Winter of Code:

The South Korean government and local tech companies have started an open source student developer contest, similar to Google's Summer of Code.

Dubbed Winter of Code, the competition will begin during Korea's winter recess in January next year. Organized by Korean games publisher NCsoft, local IT firms and the Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency, the contest aims to nurture new developers and promote open source software development in the country.

Indian Summer of Code

I wrote earlier today about the fallacy of assuming that once you start offering money the spirit that informs the world of collaborative efforts like open content evaporates, leaving crass cupidity. It occurred to me afterwards, that we have already been here before.

Back in 1998, the first wave of open source IPOs hit. One of the main beneficiaries of the VA Linux IPO was Eric Raymond. As he wrote at the time:

A few hours ago, I learned that I am now (at least in theory) absurdly rich. ... VA had indeed gone out on NASDAQ -- and I had become worth approximately forty-one million dollars while I wasn't looking.

He then turns away from this typically self-centred story to examine (with characteristic insight) the wider implications of the IPOs that were happening:

Reporters often ask me these days if I think the open-source community will be corrupted by the influx of big money. I tell them what I believe, which is this: commercial demand for programmers has been so intense for so long that anyone who can be seriously distracted by money is already gone. Our community has been self-selected for caring about other things -- accomplishment, pride, artistic passion, and each other.

This is still true. As proof, witness the Season of KDE 2006:

As in 2005, KDE again was a participating organization in this years Google Summer of Code 2006. Many interesting and much needed project ideas were submitted and students from all over the world began to apply for them. The KDE project received more than 200 student applications. Sadly Google's capacities are not limitless and thus, only 24 students were selected to participate in Google's Summer of Code under the mentorship of the KDE project.

Driven by the urge not to let many good applications go to waste the KDE project decided to give many of the rejected students a chance to realize their ideas after all in the first Season of KDE. Since KDE does not have Google's financial capacities the students will not get paid for their efforts. Still it is a very good opportunity for students to get involved in KDE development while being mentored by an experienced KDE developer and as a result be an active part of the Free Software Community.

In other words, no Google moolah is flowing, but the aspirants coders are still coding - out of sheer hacker love. Kudos to the students for doing so, and to their mentors for giving their time. That's what this open stuff is all about.

Google: Friend or Foe?

"Don't Be Evil" is the company motto: but is Google for us or against us?

I'm not talking about justifable concerns that it knows far too much about what interests us - both in terms of the searches we carry out and (if we use Gmail) the correspondence we send and receive. This is a larger issue, and relates to all the major online companies - Microsoft, Yahoo, even Amazon - that mediate and hence participate in much of our lives. What concerns me here is whether Google can be considered a friend of openness.

On the one hand, Google is quite simply the biggest open source company. Its fabled server farm consists of 10,000s/100,000s/1,000,000s (delete as applicable) of GNU/Linux boxes; this means that anyone searching with Google is a GNU/Linux user.

It has a growing list of code that it has open-sourced; it has sponsored budding hackers in its Summer of Code programme; and it keeps on acquiring key open source hackers like Guido van Rossum (inventor of Python) and Ben Goodger, (Firefox lead engineer).

On the other hand, Google's software is heavily weighted towards Microsoft Windows. Programs like Google Earth and Picasa are only available under Windows, and its latest, most ambitious foray, the Google Pack, is again only for Microsoft's operating system. This means that every time Google comes out with some really cool software, it is reinforcing Microsoft's hold on the desktop. Indeed, we are fast approaching the point where the absence of GNU/Linux versions of Google's programs are a major disincentive to adopt an open source desktop.

This dilemma is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, since Google clearly wants to serve the largest desktop market first, while drawing on the amazing price-performance of free software for its own computing platform.

But there is another area where it has the chance to play nice with openness, one that does not require it to come down definitively on one side or the other of the operating system world.

Another Windows-only product, Google Talk, is the subject of a lawsuit alleging patent infringement. However, closer examination of the two patents concerned, Patent Number 5,425,085 - "Least cost routing device for separate connection into phone line" - and Patent Number 5,519,769 - "Method and system for updating a call rating database", suggests that one of the best ways Google could show that it is a friend of both open source and proprietary software is by defending itself vigorously in the hope that the US Patent system might start to be applied as it was originally envisioned, to promote innovation, not as an easy way of extracting money from wealthy companies.

Update 1: Google has come out with a Mac version of Google Earth. It's a start.

Update 2: There are rumours about Google working on its own desktop GNU/Linux. Frankly, I'll believe it when I see it: it's a poor fit with their current portfolio, and the margins are terrible.

Update 3: Comfortingly, these rumours have now been scotched.