Google’s 10th Summer Of Code Is Now Open For Applications

For 10 years now, Google has been bringing together open source software projects and students who are looking for a challenging summer project through its Summer of Code program. Starting today, Google will accept applications for this year’s program. Applications close on Friday, March 21 at 12pm PDT.

The participating projects range from Google’s own Chromium to well-known projects like GNOME, KDE, LibreOffice and WordPress and smaller projects with interesting niche applications. In total, students can apply to over 190 organizations this year.

The company is looking for about 10 percent more students than the 1,200 who participated last year. The students get a stipend to work on these projects and they are paired with mentors.

Students who fulfill all of the requirements and submit their final program evaluations will receive a total of $5,500, which is spread into one small payment at the start of the program and two large ones over the course of the summer. The mentoring organizations receive a $500 stipend.

So far, Google says, it has brought together 7,500 students and 7,000 mentors from over 100 countries. In total, the students who participated in this project have produced over 50 million lines of code, according to Google. Because these are all open-source projects, all of the code they create and release is shared with the community.