SummerOfCode
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Google Summer of Code kicks off with Camino, Adium, Thunderbird and more
Google's Summer of Code is a really cool, really massive project focused on open source that first started back in 2005. It functions on a pretty simple concept: the company gives out grants to student developers (this summer they brought on 900 from a list of 6,200 applicants) to work on open source projects for the summer, and we all subsequently benefit in one way or another. Take a gander through the long list of projects on the menu for this summer, and click on any to see what the goals are. Whether or not these goals are met by the end of the summer is another thing entirely, but there are some great projects and features on the list for such apps as Adium, Camino, Thunderbird, Inkscape and much more. Adium, for example, might gain features like basic voice chat, AppleScript and Bonjour support, while a juicy feature on Camino's todo list is Tabsposé, bringing the window management wonders of Exposé (much like the WebKit-based Shiira features) to the more Mac-like alternative to Firefox. In fact, one of the developers involved with working Tabsposé for Camino is blogging the effort, with a few posts already online covering developer-oriented topics like getting caught up with minor details and coding resources, but also including teaser mockups of what Tabsposé might eventually look like. Long story short: Google's third round of Summer of Code looks like it will again do some great things for Mac OS X software and open source on a broader scale. Heck, those open source developers are even getting paid, which must be a nice change of pace for some of them. We'll keep an eye on what new features arise from this Google-funded coding powwow at the end of the summer.
Adium to be a Google Summer of Code project
Adium, the open source multi-network chat client with more features than I thought existed, has recently announced that they are going to be a mentoring project in this year's Google Summer of Code. For those unfamiliar: it's a program that brings students together to collaborate on and learn about open source programming. Each summer Google accepts and offers many different projects that students may apply to work on, as you can see from their extensive list.Adium's list of available projects is quite lengthy as well, which should be good news for fans and users of the app. I have honestly never paid that much attention to the Google Summer of Code events before, but I do know that they have improved or given birth to a lot of great OSS in the past. Good luck to Adium and company![via Daring Fireball]
