Google Summer of Code
The Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is an international annual program, first held from May to August 2005, in which Google awards stipends (of US$5,500, as of 2015) to all students who successfully complete a requested free and open-source software coding project during the summer. The program is open to students aged 18 or over – the closely related Google Code-In is intended for students under the age of 18.
The event draws its name from the 1967 Summer of Love (of the 1960s counterculture), and the idea for the SoC came directly from Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. From 2007 until 2009 Leslie Hawthorn, who has been involved in the project since 2006, was the program manager. In 2010, Carol Smith took over management of the program.
Overview
The program invites students who meet their eligibility criteria to post applications that detail the software-coding project they wish to perform. These applications are then evaluated by the corresponding mentoring organization. Every participating organization must provide mentors for each of the project ideas received, if the organization is of the opinion that the project would benefit from them. The mentors then rank the applications and decide among themselves which proposals to accept. Google then decides how many projects each organization gets, and asks the organizations to mark at most that many projects accordingly.
