Google Summer of Code students start your computers... it’s coding time!

Today marks the first day of coding for the 7th year of the Google Summer of Code program. The program encourages university students to "Flip Bits, not Burgers" during their summer break. This year 1,115 students will spend the next 12 weeks writing code for 175 different open source organizations. Students are working on a diverse group of projects ranging from levee sensor monitoring to music databases to adaptive game-play for learning mathematics.

We are excited to see the contributions this year’s students will make to the open source community.

For more information on important dates for the program please visit our timeline.

Happy coding!

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs

Google Summer of Code: Where are the students?

Google Summer of Code is truly a global program. For this year’s program we received 5,651 applications from 3,731 students in 97 countries.

We accepted 1,115 students from 68 countries. The ten countries with the highest number of accepted students are represented in the pie chart below.



This year we are excited to have students from 6 countries that haven’t previously been represented in Google Summer of Code: Cambodia, Georgia, Guatemala, Kyrgyz Republic, Rwanda and Uruguay.

Students are enrolled in 595 universities from around the globe.

Currently the students are in the community bonding period where they familiarize themselves with their projects, mentors and communities, before beginning the coding period on Monday, May 23rd.

Please visit our program site and timeline for more information.

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs

Camaraderie and Paella for Google Summer of Code Mentors

Early last week, 41 mentors for this year’s Google Summer of Code program gathered at a restaurant in downtown San Francisco for a meet-and-greet dinner. As this is still the community bonding period for this year’s accepted Google Summer of Code students, we thought it would be fun for the mentors to have a chance to bond with each other prior to the start of student coding on Monday, May 23rd.



The dinner brought together both new and experienced mentors from 29 of this year’s organizations to chat about their expectations for the program and their students. The casual meetup was also an opportunity for the mentors to share their questions and concerns with one another and to share advice on successfully fulfilling their roles as mentors.

Many mentors were in town for Google I/O, Google’s largest annual developer conference, that took place Tuesday and Wednesday, just a few blocks from the restaurant. A casual dinner of paella and other goodies was an entertaining way to meet others from all around the world who are actively involved in the open source community.

For more information on the Google Summer of Code program visit our homepage.

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Team

Linux File Systems in the Cloud @ Linux Collaboration Summit 2011

As tech lead of the Google Linux Storage Team I get to see how Linux runs on tens of thousands machines in Google's cloud. Over the last year our team migrated this super system from ext2 to ext4, an educational and exciting experience to say the least. We learned a lot about the impact of the Linux file system on Google.

Our team is often bombarded with questions from both within and outside of Google about why we chose ext4, and if the local file system even matters. The Linux Collaboration Summit with its audience of both kernel hackers and business folks interested in Linux deployments seemed like a good forum at which to present on this topic.

So with a lot of help from my team I put together a talk that covers a range of topics. The talk includes how cloud storage is different than both local and enterprise, our reasons behind choosing ext4 and the impact, and where the file systems need to improve to meet the demands of the cloud.

If you are interested in Linux, storage, clouds and some internal tales you might want to check it out.

By Michael Rubin, Google Engineering

Google I/O 2011

Google I/O, Google’s largest annual developer conference, will take place May 10-11 in San Francisco at the Moscone West Convention Center. Many of the tracks will feature open source products: Android, Google Web Toolkit, Google Chrome, and several Google APIs.

Open Source Program Manager Chris DiBona will be hosting a Fireside chat with the Android team on Tuesday, May 10th from 2:30-3:30pm. Earlier that day, Open Source Team Member Josh Bloch will be presenting “Java Puzzlers - Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel” from 1:15-2:15pm. Check the recently announced Google I/O full schedule for more detailed information on this year’s sessions.

The event is completely sold out, but you can watch live streaming video of both keynote presentations on the Internet. New this year is Google I/O Extended, which gives developers who are unable to attend Google I/O the opportunity to watch the keynote and other major sessions live with their peers at free viewing parties around the world. For more Google I/O updates, check @googleio.

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs