Enormous Changes to Google Summer of Code in 2015
The Google Summer of Code (GSOC) is a progam that has helped many open source projects. Google accepts applications from projects and provides up to $150,000 in stipends to help student developers contribute code.
Since it started in 2005, Google estimates that GSOC,
has brought together over 8,500 successful student participants from 101 countries and over 8,300 mentors from over 109 countries worldwide to produce over 50 million lines of code.
Last year, there was a 10% increase in the program to commemorate its 10th anniversary.
This year, there was been far more significant decrease in the size of the program. The number of accepted projects dropped from 190 last year to 137 this year – the lowest number for many years.
After seeing reaction to the news on Twitter, I compared the list of accepted projects in 2015 to the list from 2014. It appears that over 130 projects were dropped and over 80 new projects added.
Some the biggest names in open source weren’t accepted this year, including Mozilla, WordPress, the Linux Foundation and the Tor Project. There’s also a smaller group of exciting new projects that are getting GSOC support for the first time.
The Winners: In GSOC 2015, but not last year
- Africa Soil Information Service
- ASCEND
- Bika Open Source LIMS Collective
- Boston University / XIA
- CentOS Project
- Cesium Community
- CloudCV
- Department of Biomedical Informatics, Stony Brook University
- Encyclopeida of Life
- FFmpeg
- Foundation for Learning Equality
- FreeBSD
- GitHub
- Global Alliance for Genomics & Health
- GNU Mailman
- Google Kubernetes
- HPCC Systems®
- Interactive Spaces
- International GeoGebra Institute
- International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility
- IP-over-P2P Project
- JBoss Community
- JdeRobot – Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
- jQuery Foundation
- LabLua
- lowRISC
- MariaDB
- MBDyn, Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Milan
- MEDES-IMPS
- MinnowBoard Project
- MIT Media Lab
- Network Time Foundation
- NumFOCUS
- OncoBlocks
- OpenStreetMap
- Openwall
- P2PSP.org
- PaGMO / PyKEP
- Pencil Code Foundation
- Pidgin, Finch, and libpurple
- PLASMA @ UMass
- Portable Native Client
- PostgreSQL Project
- QEMU
- R Project for Statistical Computing
- Red Hen Lab
- RIOT
- RoboComp
- RouteFlow
- Rspamd spam filtering system
- RTEMS Project
- Ruby
- Ruby on Rails
- Sage Mathematical Software System
- Saros
- Scilab Enterprises
- Sustainable Computing Research Group ( SCoRe )
- TARDIS SN
- TEAMMATES @ National University of Singapore
- The Honeynet Project
- The STE||AR Group
- The syslog-ng project
- The Visualization Toolkit
- The Wine Project
- Tox Foundation
- Tux4Kids
- University of Nebraska – Helikar Lab
- X.Org Foundation
- XBMC Foundation
- Xiph.Org Foundation
- XMPP Standards Foundation
The Disappointed: In GSOC 2014, but not this year
- AerospaceResearch.Net
- Amahi
- Apertium
- appleseed
- Arches Project
- Association Tatoeba
- Battle for Wesnoth
- Benetech
- Bio4j
- BioJavaScript
- Biomedical Informatics, Emory University
- Blender Foundation
- Bookie
- Boost C++ Libraries
- BRL-CAD
- Buildroot
- BumbleBee Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (BBAUV)
- Catrobat (formerly Catroid Project)
- Centre for Computational Medicine, SickKids Research Institute
- Ceph
- Checkstyle
- CodeCombat
- CodeMirror
- Computational Science and Engineering at TU Wien
- coreboot
- Crypto Stick
- Crystal Space
- Dr. Memory
- Flowgrammable
- Freenet Project Inc
- Freifunk
- Frenetic
- Gambit: Software Tools for Game Theory
- Ganglia
- Gentoo Foundation
- GNOME
- GNSS-SDR
- GNU Octave
- GNU Project
- GNU Radio
- Grameen Foundation – MOTECH
- Groovy Community
- Haiku
- Health Information Systems Programme
- HelenOS group at Department of Distributed and Dependable Systems, Charles University in Prague
- illumos
- Inclusive Design Institute
- Inkscape
- International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility
- Italian Mars Society
- JBoss Community
- Jitsi
- jMonkeyEngine
- Joomla!
- KolibriOS Project Team
- Laboratory for Cosmological Data Mining
- LEAP Encryption Access Project
- LibreOffice
- Linaro
- Linux Trace Toolkit next generation project (LTTng)
- LyX – The Document Processor
- Measurement Lab (M-Lab)
- Melange
- Mifos Initiative
- Mixxx DJ Software
- mlpack: scalable C++ machine learning library
- Monkey Project
- Mozilla
- MuseScore
- National Resource for Network Biology (NRNB)
- Netfilter Project
- NetSurf
- OGDF – Open Graph Drawing Framework
- Open Bioinformatics Foundation
- Open Education Resource Foundation
- Open Lighting Project
- Open Motion Planning Library
- openSUSE
- OSv
- oVirt
- OWASP Foundation
- phpBB Forum Software
- Plan 9 from Bell Labs
- Plone Foundation
- Point Cloud Library (PCL)
- PRISM Model Checker
- Project Tox
- Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science
- QEMU
- R Project for Statistical Computing
- Raxa
- RouteFlow
- RTEMS Project
- Sahana Software Foundation
- Scaffold Hunter
- ScummVM
- Shogun Machine Learning Toolbox
- Sigmah
- Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc.
- Steel Bank Common Lisp
- Stratosphere Project
- SuperTuxKart
- Swathanthra Malayalam Computing
- SymPy
- SyncDiff(erent)
- The CGAL Project
- The Julia Language
- The Linux Foundation
- The OpenStack Foundation
- The Perl Foundation
- The Privly Foundation
- The STE||AR Group
- The syslog-ng project
- The Tor Project and EFF
- The Wiselib
- ThinkUp
- TimVideos.us
- TYPO3 Association
- Visualization Toolkit (VTK)
- Wikimedia
- WordPress
- WorldForge
- WSO2
- wxWidgets
- Xapian Search Engine Library
- Xen Project
What are your thoughts on these changes?
First, apologies if I made any errors in comparing these too lists – I probably missed one or two. Please feel free to correct me in the comments.
Second, I can’t see any clear patten to which projects were accepted and which weren’t, but let me know if you can.
I’m obviously sad that Joomla didn’t make it – but I’m also glad for all these new organizations. I’m looking at the list of new organizations, and see amazing organizations focused on everything from environmental issues in Africa, to collaborative coding, and web security, all with open source code. I’m glad these organizations will get a boost, they definitely deserve it.
Well said, Jon. If there’s a pattern, that’s probably it – Google wanted to bring on board a whole lot of fresh faces.
LLVM Compiler Infrastructure seems to be in both lists. I can’t speak for the others, but I believe The Perl Foundation just ran into some logistical issues so they weren’t ready in time (ie, if there is a pattern, they won’t be a part of it).
Thanks for catching that, Kevin, and for the Perl update.
Great post, but I noticed that the Nmap Project is in both your lists when it shouldn’t be in either. We’re in what might make for a great third list of orgs which participated last year and are grateful and happy to have been accepted this year too!
Thanks for catching that, Fyodor
These lists are faulty. For example, Clojure participated last year. X.Org, syslog-ng, Python Software Foundation all got accepted.
Thanks for spotting those, Dan
Bookie did not apply this year, as we are swamped with other commitments. Just clarifying that it wasn’t Google’s decision this year.
Thanks Craig. Yes, I think that’s true of several organizations, including WordPress and Perl.
lmonade is on both lists.
Thanks lmonade
At least FOSSASIA, LibreOffice, Privly, Tox, Wine and X.Org were in 2014 so you might want to go through that first list again.
Thanks Beluga – I fixed 3 of that list that were mistakes
Great list Steve, only think I spotted was Sugar Labs being in both lists.
Thanks Phil
Boost C++ libraries is participating this year
Thank you. This list helped a lot.